


and for my next trick

by bintkelb



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mutants, Detective Noir, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2019-01-07 16:16:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12236325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bintkelb/pseuds/bintkelb
Summary: The last thing Shiro wants to do is fuck up the first real case he’s had in a year of serving subpoenas and a string of paranoid spouses one after the other, all needing verification of their partner’s fidelity. He tries to calm his breathing, taking slow steps away from the club and onto the intermittently lit sidewalk. Sometimes it was the stupidest things; a cart with a squeaky wheel strolling past him at the grocery store, the sound of an airplane engine roaring distantly overhead and Shiro was thrown back there in the wreckage, bleeding out in the smoke and rain.





	and for my next trick

**Author's Note:**

> alright it's back

 

Shiro is officially a PI for three months before he lands his first case. He’s desperate enough that he doesn’t mind it being a missing college kid; most likely off on a bender and most likely a waste of Shiro’s time. He needs something under his belt, even if it means he’s stuck meeting a witness at a crowded club, music beating at his skull and the air too thick to breathe properly. He’d rather be anywhere but here, especially if it meant in bed with Keith, happily asleep. 

“Listen,” Jamie says, interrupting Shiro’s line of thought. He tilts his drink perilously between two fingers in the air. He’s Shiro’s second interview. Shiro turns away from the crowd he’d been scanning. 

Jamie’s elbow rests on the table between them, “Like I told the cop before you, I saw her once last week. We had a good time and I haven’t seen her since.”

Jamie’s skin is currently a mosaic of green and yellow, swirling like patterns in a kaleidoscope as he sways slightly to the beat of the club’s music. His mutation doesn’t seem to extend to his hair, its silken magenta strands chemical-fresh.

A couple moves past their booth, bumping into the edge of their table. It scrapes across the tiny space.

“Well, I’m not a cop,” Shiro says. He has to yell to be heard over the music, and that makes projecting “harmless” a little hard. He hasn’t had much of a chance to do a lot of interviewing as a PI, but generally he’s found people a little more at ease without the presence of a badge.

“No shit,” Jamie says, flashing perfect glow-in-the-dark teeth, looking pointedly down in a way that makes it clear he’s eyeing Shiro’s septum ring. If there’s an insult there it slips past Shiro like water off a duck’s back.

“What did he want?” Shiro asks, like he doesn’t know. He smiles casually and leans back in his seat, even though every instinct wants him to move forward. His own drink sits untouched in front of him, cradled in the circle of his metal hand.

If he can make Jamie feel he’s on his side, the better. He flexes the fingers of his right hand and holds back a wince. His entire forearm feels strange and numb now, from the elbow down, like he’s hit a funny bone. He digs his fingers down hard against his thigh, trying his best to conceal the movement. If Jamie notices he doesn’t let on.

“When I last saw Lisa. If she told me she was going anywhere,” Jamie continues, bored, gesturing vaguely with a slender hand. “Which she didn’t, if that’s your next question.”

“What time did you part ways on Sunday?” Shiro asks, straining despite himself to be heard. The bass feels like its drilling a hole through the side of his skull. _Thump, thump, thump_. His question meets dead silence and a long, hard stare, until he curses internally and digs into his jacket pocket once more.

Shiro slides a folded twenty across the table. He looks down briefly, and his heart stutters in his chest.

The bill is moving, as if of its own accord, against the shiny metallic surface.

Shiro’s entire right hand is invisible.

A cold fist squeezes around his heart. All he can do for a long, stupid moment is blink down at it in shock. Then he violently snatches his arm back and under the table, reacting first to conceal before he can figure out - whatever’s happening - what’s -

Sound seems to warp around him, then return in a warbled crescendo. Jamie hasn’t noticed, focused up and away from Shiro’s face, swaying slightly in his seat. The hand that isn’t holding his drink slides deftly over.

“Three or four in the morning,” Jamie says, as soon as the money’s disappeared in his clothing, although where he could hide anything under the two inches of fabric he had on was anyone’s guess.

“So I guess it was technically Monday morning. Can I get in trouble for that?”

He smiles slyly, like they’re sharing a private joke.

“Did she say anything else?” Shiro says.

His throat feels like it's closing in, but the words sound steady as they tumble out. A prickle of sweat forms at his temple. He ignores the urge to wipe at it, to scream, to yank his arm back from under the table. It was just an - image - a hallucination -

Jamie snorts at the question, head tilting back. He swings his long legs to the side and grabs a pair of plastic wings hanging from the back of his chair. They’re impressively realistic - night moth shaped with large black eyespots. He slings them over his narrow shoulders and makes to leave. Shiro can tell he’s gearing up for a flourished exit, which just seems fitting, so he sits back and doesn’t ask again. He concentrates on his breathing. Listening. _Focus on the fucking words. Do your job._

“Wasn’t much talking, stud,” is all Jamie says. Shiro can’t shake the feeling there’s more there, and he mentally kicks himself for agreeing to the location. But it was the only time Jamie had been willing to meet, and setting it up in Jamie’s ten-minute break between sets had already felt like pulling teeth.

Shiro tries again.

“She didn’t have anything bothering her? Nothing with school? Partner?”

“The usual. Work stuff. Her project,” Jamie’s at Shiro’s side now, he smiles down, one perfect eyebrow lifted. “And that’s all you’re getting from me, doll. Break’s over, unless you’re paying for extra?”

“I’m good,” Shiro says, and Jamie walks off, heading in the direction of the far end of the club, where a platform houses two similarly dressed dancers, swaying above the crowd in discordant rhythms.

*

Once Jamie leaves, disappearing into the teeming crowd, Shiro snatches his hand back from under the table. It’s there. They’re both there, and visible, and he’s off his fucking rocker.

He downs the rest of the finger of amber liquid before him and slides swiftly to his feet, pushing through the press of bodies, the beat of the music now just one tight pressure on his skull, and a newly formed knot at the back of his neck he knows will be a full blown migraine by the morning. He pulls his phone from his pocket. A second after flipping it open the screen goes black and dies. Perfect.

Shiro makes his way to the end of the bar and waves over a bartender in the process of swiping a credit card, furiously tapping in orders on a flat tablet screen. Her high ponytail swings as she approaches, cat eyeliner nearly reaching the ends of her brows.

“There a payphone somewhere near I can use?” Shiro asks. More yelling.

Confusion clouds her features.

“Uh. I don’t - you wanna pay to use our phone?”

_Thump, thump, thump._

“No. Just. Forget it,” Shiro says. A hard shoulder jostles him to the side and he rides out the momentum. His face feels flushed, the air thick like the noise is seeping into a physical state. The image of the dollar bill, sliding across that table like a cheap magic trick, keeps playing in his head on loop.

Out, he needs to be outside. He needs to be out, out, out -

*

Shiro stumbles out of a side entrance into a shock of chilly November night air. The heavy door shuts behind him with a slow hiss, choking off the rush of bodies, laughter, and music from an overwhelming height to a muffled, distant near-nothing.

The last thing Shiro wants to do is fuck up the first real case he’s had in a year of serving subpoenas and a string of paranoid spouses one after the other, all needing verification of their partner’s fidelity. He tries to calm his breathing, taking slow steps away from the club and onto the intermittently lit sidewalk. Sometimes it was the stupidest things; a cart with a squeaky wheel strolling past him at the grocery store, the sound of an airplane engine roaring distantly overhead and Shiro was thrown back there in the wreckage, bleeding out in the smoke and rain.

He’d been offered the best of current bionic technology in the form of a fully functional metal prosthesis, something he could have never dreamed of affording in a lifetime as a beat cop. He’d taken it all in stride, moved through the hazy aftermath like a sailboat on tranquil waters. Even let that genius kid he’d met at the hospital tinker with the arm like Shiro was his personal ken doll.

The thought of Lance - the various afternoons spent on modifications, the numbing cream he used on Shiro’s shoulder - ratchets through Shiro’s mind like a loose ping-pong ball, and he feels his heart seize up suddenly with nameless panic and suspicion. He takes off down the darkened street.

*

Shiro jams the buzzer outside of a miniscule stretch of rusted metal gating eight consecutive times in a row. It surrounds the tiny front lawn of a ramshackle townhouse. Somewhere between the seventh and last press the intercom crackles on and an annoyed voice snaps, “Alright, alright, hold your fuckin horses.”

Shiro waits another five seconds, glancing down the silent, empty street before seizing the tops of the ancient railing and hopping over. If a curtain two houses down twitches slightly, or anyone sees him, no one will say a word. It’s the kind of neighborhood Shiro appreciates nowadays.

He walks right across the strip of dead, barren lawn out front and around the side of the house, stepping carefully through frost and ice. What little patches of grass there are crackle underfoot.

There’s a light shining through the miniscule basement window, and another in the kitchen. The screen door on the kitchen entrance is already gaping open as Shiro approaches. He takes the two concrete steps up slowly. At the door Shiro pauses to listen. There’s a TV on somewhere further inside, the living room, Senior likely doing more dozing than watching.

He holds the screen door open with one hand and tests the frozen knob slowly with the other. It sticks for a second before turning in his grip. Fuckin idiot kid.

Shiro quickly turns the knob the rest of the way and pushes the door open. It takes him a moment’s glance around the room - exit points empty, a single occupant inside, his left, facing away - then he’s striding across and grabbing Lance by the collar of his jacket.

“Hey! Metal man, shi-t - ” Lance yelps as Shiro pushes him away and up, his head knocking back against ancient cabinetry.

“Fuck. I was about to get the door!” Lance exclaims.

His hands scrabble at Shiro’s forearms. He’s just as scrawny and short as the last time Shiro saw him, although Shiro never expected any change in the latter. No change in the shock of unruly brown hair on his head, or the patches of chartreuse scales that cover his skin, although they were a duller color than usual, and as Shiro tightens his grip and Lance scrambles back against the counter, a thin dead layer scrapes off the back of his neck and onto his shoulder.

Shiro takes no visible notice.

“You’re gonna tell me what the fuck you did to me, or your old man, and that fuckin tin can pet can pick up the pieces.”

“What! I didn’t do anything! Your arm? That amazing piece of construc - ugh - ”

Shiro tightens his hold again and lifts Lance back from where he’s fallen forward slightly. Alright, hands otherwise occupied. Toes probably scrabbling for leverage. No weapons nearby. Out of the corner of his eye - a half-made PB&J on the floor and a thin piece of paper towel beside it that had been serving as a plate, which was probably how he was occupied when Shiro had rung the buzzer. He’d been making it with a plastic fork.

Lance’s pleading a mile a minute.

“Please. Shiro. Dude. Don’t hurt me, bro. We can figure this out! You know, uh, customer service, we never discussed the length of a warranty or shit, or even the existence but - ”

A metallic clatter resounds from the living room and a querulous, thin voice calls out.

“Lance! What’s the goddamn racket?”

Shiro freezes. His brain, which feels like it's been tossed around in a hurricane, now stills, thrown out and into dead silence. He stares down at this fingers digging in like claws into the fabric covering Lance’s front, then up into Lance’s wide, pleading eyes.

“Nothing! Pops. Dropped a plate,” Lance calls back.

There’s a muttered curse, then the volume of some inane infomercial surging and after a moment the soft sounds of snoring drift into the kitchen.

Lance’s fingers slide back up Shiro’s forearms, petting at him almost, consolingly.

“Hey, you there? Shiro?” Lance whispers down at Shiro’s frozen visage.

The vertical slits of his pupils are the widest Shiro’s ever seen them.

“Shiro - ”

His words cut off with an abrupt thump as Shiro releases him, stepping back. He wipes at his face, heart racing again, because while Lance was otherwise full of shit 90% of the time, he wasn’t lying here, that much Shiro could tell. His hip bumps into the side of a rickety card table as he walks mindlessly back.

Lance has his hands held out like he’s calming a wild animal.

“Okay. Alright. You’re good, bro. Just a misunderstanding,” Lance’s saying, even though he doesn’t know, he doesn’t _understand_.

“Breathing exercises, right?” Lance continues, in a practiced, calming tone.

Right. Yes.

Shiro fumbles for the tiny folding metal chair behind him. His knees give out as he sits.

In two - three - four. Hold for seven. Out for eight. Repeat.

He focuses and breathes and lets Lance move around him, talking in the same, steady cajoling stream of words until he doesn’t feel like his heart is still planning on bursting from his chest.

In the calm of the aftermath Shiro looks around the dimly lit kitchen.

“Shit,” he says, and stuffs his face into his hands.

“Hey, it’s cool. I’ve seen worse,” Lance says. He’s at Shiro’s side now, placing a tall glass of water on the table. “I mean, I’ve seen better. More dramatic, really brought the theater home you know. I mean I feel like I saw this one but I didn’t really _feel_ it, you know.”

Shiro laughs despite himself.

“Stop trying to make me feel better about being a giant ass.”

“You want something? Fruit?” Lance asks, gesturing to the wicker basket at the end of the table. There’s a single, sad-looking orange settled in the center.

“No,” Shiro says, voice muffled behind his hands. Then something abruptly ticks in his brain. “Shit. I gotta call Keith.”

“Text him,” Lance says immediately, “it’s three in the morning. Unless. I mean I don’t know your business.”

“No you’re right. Lost track of - I lost - ”

“Just text him first, Shiro. Where’s your phone?”

Shiro scrabbles in his back pocket. A soft snort escapes Lance at the sight of Shiro’s outdated flip phone, but he keeps the snark at bay for once. It’s well-trodden ground as it stands anyways.

“Um,” Shiro says, turning his phone’s lifeless face towards Lance.

“One second, I got something back here,” Lance says. He disappears into an alcove next to the kitchen and Shiro hears him rummaging for a while before he returns with a cord.

Shiro plugs his phone in and watches Lance move around the kitchen, tossing his half-made sandwich in a bag ( _pigeons_ , is Lance’s only explanation) then slinking back to his chair at the table.

He watches Shiro type out a text.

_Took a little longer than planned. Lance’s. Back in 30._

Shiro stares at the tiny screen in his hand for a long moment, thinking of Keith probably asleep for hours now, wrapped up warm and safe in their bed, oblivious to Shiro taking five steps back for every half step forward. Now this shit.

“So you gonna tell me what happened?” Lance asks, interrupting Shiro’s chain of thought. “Cause you ruined my midnight snack and that was the last of the WonderBread.”

“I’ll get you some more.”

“My hero,” Lance says, leaning back in his chair. He has one knee over the other, foot swinging merrily in the air, arms folded casually in his lap.

Shiro grabs the glass of water and takes a quick, grateful sip. Then three more.

“Don’t act like I didn’t just try to kill you,” he says gruffly between sips.

“Eh. More like, violently extract information from me if we’re being super technical.”

“We’re not.”

“Which has greatly improved the boredom of my night but now I gotta tell you I’m... _deathly_ curious - “

“Nevermind I should’ve killed you when I had the chance.”

“Way too late for that, buddy. Now tell me about whatever it is that’s got you all…”

Lance makes a vague, all encompassing wave with his hand of Shiro’s person. That. Everything. _This entire mess,_ Shiro thinks.

Shiro clears his throat.

“Can we take this somewhere private?”

Lance’s eyes gleam with open curiosity. His third eyelids flicker briefly down as he blinks.

Then he stands up with a flourish of his hand towards the inner part of the house.

“My basement dwelling is your basement dwelling,” he says.

*

The heat in the subterranean room hits them in a single blistering wave as Shiro follows Lance down the steep stairs.

“Jesus, kid, it’s boiling down here,” Shiro says, eyes roving the familiar space. Electronics in various stages of upkeep, disuse, disassemblement, and operation line the walls and litter every flat surface available. Shiro’s as familiar with the space as one can be after spending several consecutive weeks jammed in amongst the rubble having Lance measure and poke and prod, nearly jumping out of his skin with the excitement of getting to work with a functional bionic arm.

“Not just any metal arm, dude,” Lance had said, early on in the process. “This thing is gonna let you do some wild shit. Lift a bus off the street. Tear a rampaging elephant apart before it tramples a helpless baby - ”

“Elephants don’t rampage.”

“Okay, whatever, I saw it in a movie.”

Which is how Lance probably absorbed most of his nonexistent life experiences, Shiro had realized at the time. When he’d woken up a week after surviving a trainwreck, in the hospital, and a scrawny kid was seated at his side typing a mile a minute on a battered laptop, he’d only managed to feel vaguely surprised through the confusing haze of drugs. As he’d come to realize, no kid without a shitty home life barraged strangers with such nervously eager questions while their parent recovered from pneumonia, even though at first their acquaintance mostly consisted of Shiro feeling like he was suffering through some sort of strange endurance test.

In the present, Lance turns to glare at one of the broad, flat screens anchored on a wall nearby.

“Someone forgot to order more coolant,” Lance says accusingly.

He sits down heavily on a large, black swivel chair, fingers flying over his keyboard, several more screens coming back to life. The blue tinted light of the monitors turns the scales at his neck a glittering galaxy of green and gold. A giant, red, naked bulb glows ominously above him, looking for all purposes like an oversized, peculiar choice of desk lamp.

Shiro can feel warmth emanating off the thing from across the room.

Shiro takes a seat on a low, brown corduroy sofa jammed between a bookcase and a menacing pile of something, no doubt more electronics, obscured under a bulging piece of tarp. His fingers find the crumpled packet of Lucky Strikes in his inner coat pocket. He counts three left.

“Uh uh. Not in here,” Lance calls out, somehow noticing even though his eyes haven’t left the screen.

Shiro wants to snap something to hurry him along but he’s all too aware of how he got here, and the state he’d been in not five minutes ago. Lance can take as long as he pleases, Shiro thinks to himself, which is followed shortly by the dismal thought that that might be for quite some time yet.

He eyes the pillow jammed into the corner of the sofa.

“Alright,” Lance says with a final clack of the keyboard. He presses one last key with a flourish and swivels abruptly in his chair.

“Spill. The suspense is killing me.”

Lance walks the chair over on its wheels, tongue caught between his teeth as he navigates it through the narrow, empty space.

“Powerade?”

“No,” Shiro says with a sigh. His fingers card absentmindedly through his hair. “I mean, yes. What flavor?”

“Blue.”

“Then, no.”

Lance shrugs, bending over to grab at a plastic crate amidst the rubble. His skinny arm returns with a bottle.

“The arm,” he prompts Shiro, folding the sleeve of his sweatshirt over the bottle’s top to open it.

“It, uh. I’m on a case and I was interviewing - ” Shiro starts. He pauses out of habit, sure Lance has another quip ready, but the kid’s listening quietly now, eyes trained on Shiro’s face. The shitty lighting insures they’re both steeped in shadow, silhouetting Lance’s silent form. Shiro isn’t used to seeing him in any other state than constant, frantic motion.

In the still and quiet Shiro’s able to replay the night’s events. He stares down at his hands curled palms up in his lap. Both wholly visible.

“We’re at a club. Noisy as shit. My head’s starting to ache. But everything’s fine, you know. Then I reach across the table, slide a twenty over and my hand’s not - it’s not there. It’s fucking invisible or some shit and I know it’s real, I wasn’t dreaming. It wasn’t a hallucination.”

Shiro looks up again sharply.

Lance’s staring back, eyes intent, bottle cradled in his lap.

“Okay,” he says softly, “I believe you. I’m guessing it’s not - it wasn’t the one I messed with, which is probably what you assumed.”

“No. That wasn’t it,” Shiro says. He flexes the hand in question, watching the wonder of interconnecting panels slot and slide against each other, never quite over the magnificence of its work. It had been impressive enough straight from the robotics lab but Lance had turned it into something else. The mechanics whir and hum briefly as he continues to flex the arm.

When Shiro looks up Lance’s watching with a shy, pleased smile.

“I’ll never stop telling you what a piece of work this is,” Shiro says.

Lance flushes, then uncaps the bottle in his lap and hides his grin behind a careful sip.

“No biggie. Thanks for giving me the chance.”

“Let’s call it even,” Shiro says.

Lance only clears his throat and waves the well-worn argument away.

“So it’s not a hallucination. How long did it last for?”

“Dunno,” Shiro replies, frowning through the haze of his recollection. He’d been too freaked out to have a good sense of the timing. “I glanced down once and it was still - gone - when I had both hands down under the table. Then when I looked again it was back. I could see it again.”

“Did you feel anything before it happened?”

No. The dull pain of the music deep in his skull, his ears ringing slightly. Then -

“Yeah. Like pins and needles.”

“How long?”

“A couple of minutes.” Shiro pauses, thinking. “But I’d felt it for...I’d felt it a few days before that. Thought it was nothing.”

“Shiro…” Lance begins gently, far from his usual tone. The wind picks up outside, groaning distantly around tight corners. “Were you tested as a kid?”

“Of course,” Shiro replies quickly. His heart lurches at the implication. “Same as anyone else.”

Lance is uncharacteristically silent in response.

“Hospital when I was born. 8th grade. They didn’t find anything.”

“They wouldn’t if it were latent,” Lance points out carefully.

Shiro flinches.

The more extreme cases are rare, as far as Shiro knows. A kid ends up behind bars for arson and manslaughter because he couldn’t stop the bursts of flaming fire that had blazed uncontrollably from his hands. Shiro had watched the trial outcome on the miniscule TV in his hospital bed, with Keith at his side, the hush of a charcoal pencil moving on paper as Keith sketched. Worst case scenario aside, he’d have trouble finding cases. Then he had Keith to think about. Their apartment. His eyes flit in brief panic around the stuffy, cloistered space. The crumbling brick interior.

“Alright, hey,” Lance says, before Shiro can get too far. He sticks his hands up in a calming gesture. “All avenues of inquiry, right?”

Shiro swallows down the pit of anxiety. Irrational thoughts. He was already having enough of those, like thinking he couldn’t see his own damn hand when he had an open case to work and bills to pay and zero time for this particular brand of crazy.

“I taught you that,” Shiro says finally, and Lance grins.

“See? I’m receptive to input.”

“Selectively receptive,” CORAN pipes up in the background.

“Hey!” Lance’s head whips back in the direction of the big, blue screen, lines of coding ticking across its flat interface. “You got something to say now?”

“Lance was in quite a mood previously,” CORAN intones, as if speaking privately to Shiro, “after forgetting to extend the coolant order coding into the winter months.”

Lance hunches back down under CORAN’ accusations.

“It’s nearly fucking December,” he mutters into his drink.

 “And we dwell in a cloistered environment with several sources of synthetically generated heat.”

“Well, I set these things up so I don’t have to remember,” Lance replies, fully sulking now.

He makes a puppet shape out of his free hand and starts moving its mouth open and shut to mimic CORAN as the AI continues to admonish him.

Shiro snorts ruefully and shakes his head.

“And that’s my cue,” he says, heaving himself to a standing position.

“Hey! Don’t go just yet. We have a mystery to solve.”

“ _You_ can solve this mystery, thanks.” Shiro corrects, pushing it firmly aside in his mind. “Got enough on my plate.”

He reaches inside his coat and actually withdraws a cigarette this time, tapping the end absently on the palm of his hand. Talking about it has helped immensely, and his worries look childish and weak in the aftermath of putting the experience into words.

His freakout looks especially, phenomenally bad, but he can make that up to Lance, then ease off seeing him for a while, because the last thing the kid needs is Shiro’s crap piled on top of his own. He’s tired, and the wiring’s never gone back to normal in his brain. He’ll take the hallucination excuse, as real as it felt.

“Don’t be a stranger!” Lance calls out plaintively as Shiro’s already halfway up the stairs.

Shiro turns back and sloppily salutes the kid, a small figure painted in shadow, dwarfed by the piles of machinery surrounding him; a robot womb.

*

The sky is a lighter shade of blue-black as Shiro makes his way home.

He smokes as he walks, the path back to the nearest subway stop seeming far longer than it had been in his panic an hour before. He grinds the empty cigarette butt into the platform wall once he arrives and tosses it into a dented trash can.

He paces as he waits, then stuffs his flesh hand into his back pocket for his phone, thumb jamming against buttons, and pulls up a calendar. The previous Sunday was the 8th, and assuming Lisa had disappeared some time that night which made her absent at the appointment with Mrs. Eldridge Monday afternoon. By Thursday Mrs. Eldridge was in Shiro’s office, which made the fourth day missing.

The police had dismissed the case already, having determined no evidence of foul play. It didn’t help that Mrs. Eldridge had confided in Shiro that Lisa _had a habit of taking breaks_ , which was a nice way, he assumed, of admitting that her daughter could show back up any day now.

Shiro couldn’t access the case file but he could retrace her steps, starting with the people closest to her. Lisa was a senior at a liberal arts college not far from Shiro’s office in the city, and while college students who had just hit drinking age weren’t generally known for reliability in conveying every travel plan with their parents, it seemed equally strange to take a last minute vacation just a few weeks shy of graduation.

The only other people on the train this time of night are a young couple, clutching hands and leaning against each other like stacked kindling, and an old man pulling a busted up duffle, muttering to himself as he drags his hold to the far end of the carriage.

Shiro takes a seat far away from his fellow passengers and immediately drops off into a deep sleep.

_Ladies and Gentlemen, please stand away from the platform edge - please stand - away -_

Shiro jerks to with a shout lodged in his throat. If anyone notices they don’t show it, and they probably don’t care. He wobbles to his feet and walks on unsteady legs to a center pole, holding on for two stops until it's his turn to get off.

Their apartment is a recently converted loft in a part of town more industrial than residential, and probably quite stubbornly so for a good few years yet. It’s smaller than ideal and would be hellishly cramped if Shiro didn’t throw away half the things Keith dragged home. Keith insisted it made the place cozy. Shiro secretly thought Keith had some terrible hoarding tendencies, but his Aunt Ruth had taught him better and when the subject came up Shiro would delicately use the word _nesting_ instead and charm Keith into agreeing they didn’t really need whatever item he’d managed to bring in that day.

He passes a block of warehouses, mind turning eagerly home, settling on Keith with a pang of sudden desire that’s nearly painful. He blinks to clear eyes gone dry from the wind and cold, turning instantly once he spots the familiar red brick of their building.

The first floor is a bulk teacher’s supply store, which means the traffic around their block is usually, albeit harried, pleasant enough for conversation, which Keith had taken to happily, and way too talkative and curious for Shiro’s. It also means Keith has easy access to some of the cheaper art supplies he sometimes needs.

Shiro exists the elevator and nearly stumbles into the hallway leading to their apartment. He leaves his boots by the entrance once he unlocks the door and steps in, then walks on socked feet to the bedroom, carefully sliding the thin partition open.

A space heater in the corner provides a single, dim, orange light in the otherwise dark interior. Shiro makes Keith out, a lump huddled under the comforter smack in the middle of the bed. Shiro snorts softly to himself as he sheds the rest of his outerwear, shivering slightly as he crosses the room. Sudden exhaustion washes over him like a tidal wave, and what he wants suddenly, desperately and all-consumingly, is every inch of Keith’s skin pressed against his own.

In the glimpses of outside sky through gaps in the blinds Shiro can tell the night is now bleeding into the very edge of dawn. He eases in under the covers as silently as he can. Keith still makes a soft, grumbly sound in his sleep and begins to turn towards Shiro’s sudden presence.

“Shh, it’s just me,” Shiro says senselessly. It’s hot and toasty as an oven under their huge down comforter, and he barely suppresses a groan as he sinks into the heat and comfort, drawing Keith into his arms.

“Cold,” Keith mumbles, shivering at the cool touch of Shiro’s left arm.

“Sorry,” Shiro whispers back, feeling anything but apologetic. The metal will adapt within seconds. He stuffs his face into Keith’s neck and inhales the heated scent of his skin, the citrusy shampoo he uses in his hair.

“Lance alright?”

Shiro bites back a groan. Though Keith had yet to meet him the topic of Lance was well-trodden ground, and Shiro always feels like the worst sort of asshole thinking of all the ways he’d tried to get Lance to talk to someone when he hadn’t stepped a foot inside his own shrink’s office in months.

“He’s fine, go back to sleep.”

Shiro presses his lips against the soft skin at the underside of Keith’s jaw.

Keith hums quietly in response, settling into Shiro’s hold.

In the silence and dark and warmth, with Keith in his arms, Shiro slips quickly into sleep.

*

It’s well past noon when Shiro wakes the next morning.

Heavy, golden light streams in thin slits through the blinds. He’s sprawled diagonally across their queen size mattress, comforter bunched up around his torso and over his head, leaving his feet naked to the cool morning air. Shiro groans into his pillow, vestiges of the night before slogging back as if pulled through mud. The club. Jamie’s thin hand gesturing in the air. That wretched, all encompassing thud of music. Lance’s wide pleading eyes and later, Lance listening. Shiro’s hand.

A startled grunt escapes his throat as he snatches his hand out from under the pillow and checks it with bleary eyes. Still whole and very much visible. Fuckin headcase, that’s what he is now. Survive one little passenger trainwreck and everything upstairs goes to shit.

He pushes up and pads over to the bathroom to relieve himself and brush his teeth. He fumbles in the medicine cabinet for an ibuprofen and swallows it down with a handful of water from the tap.

When he returns to the bedroom, Shiro snaps the blinds open that line the wall so the room glows with light and natural heat. Then he burrows back into bed, just as the air vent in the kitchen shuts off.

In the ensuing relative silence Shiro directs the useless litany of his state of mind, a well acquainted line of thought, elsewhere with a physical jerk of his head. A clank of cutlery approaches, soft footsteps over wooden floorboards. The smell of coffee and toasted bread wafts through as Keith opens one of the sliding partitions to their bedroom.

“Morning, grumpy,” Keith says.

He looks like a creature molded in light, dewy pale skin nearly glowing. He’s wearing an oversized knitted sweater, the neck so wide it nearly falls off one shoulder, showing the curve of one full pec, a stretch of skin immediately and endlessly inviting. If he was a sensible man Shiro would probably say something about Keith stealing all his best clothes, but he likes the sight of Keith drowning in them, hoards each time Keith does it in his memory bank like a dragon with treasure.

Shiro pushes up to his elbows and watches Keith make his way over, eyes slipping down to the sway of Keith’s hips in a pair of soft, low-slung sweatpants.

“Thought I told you to quit walking around barefoot,” Shiro immediately grumps.

Keith sets a tray down on the bed with two mugs of coffee, and a plate of toast with a side of scrambled eggs.

“And I told you your concern was an endearing but scientifically inaccurate old wive’s tale,” Keith replies mockingly, bending down so his sweet mouth is an inch away from Shiro’s.

Shiro leans up to kiss him and Keith readily pulls away. He pushes the tray closer to Shiro.

“Eat first,” he says, “feel like I haven’t seen you in a week and god knows whether you’ve eaten without me around to bug you.”

Shiro grunts in reply, thinking to say more until he bites into a mouthful of toast and eggs and decides otherwise, his hunger rearing its ugly head. He takes a few more rapid, enthusiastic bites while Keith watches and drinks from his mug.

“Weird fuckin night,” Shiro says at last, when the worst of his hunger abates.

“Wanna talk about it?” Keith asks.

Shiro chews on a piece of toast and studies Keith’s somber face. There’s a smear of yellow paint on the side of his neck where he hadn’t quite managed to wipe it away or maybe hadn’t noticed. Keith would have hated the club had he been there, which Shiro foregoes mentioning. He’d been jumpy about loud, crowded spaces as long as Shiro had known him, which he’d told Shiro made him feel like someone had lodged a megaphone in his ear and was yelling right in.

Shiro takes another sip of his coffee before leaning back towards the headboard and setting the entire tray on the nightstand. He wants the exact opposite of having to talk about it.

“Not really,” Shiro says. “C’mere.” He grabs Keith’s foot, attempting to tug him closer.

Keith smiles smugly from behind his mug and makes a show of taking another drink.

“I gotta finish my coffee,” he says, falsely petulant.

“No you don’t,” Shiro says, tugging harder so Keith’s pulled bodily across the bed. Keith yelps, barely saving his drink from spilling.

“Shiro! You could’ve made a mess!” Keith exclaims, but he’s laughing a second later.

“Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve,” Shiro sing-songs, curling over the foot in his possession. He pushes the material of one pant length up Keith’s leg to his knee and kisses up the length of Keith’s calf.

“Shiro,” Keith says, on a sigh. He wiggles the foot in Shiro’s grip with no real intention of escape.

“You’re right, I’m still hungry,” Shiro says, looking up at Keith. Then he bites down gentle and deliberate on the meat of Keith’s calf. He presses a kiss down on the same spot, soothing the pink mark with his lips.

Keith flushes, red lips falling open in naked desire as he watches Shiro’s mouth. Shiro was always ready to jump right in, but half the fun was winding Keith up so easily.

“C’mere, c’mere, I need you right now,” Shiro says, pulling Keith closer. Keith acquiesces, setting his mug on the nightstand with a haphazard clink, then curls over Shiro so he can kiss him.

Shiro’s kissing him filthy and wet as soon as their lips meet, holding Keith steady with a hand at his jaw so he can suck at his lips, licking into Keith’s hot, inviting mouth. Keith sighs into the kiss and moans when Shiro makes a particularly soft, wet sound, which in turn only fuels the fire of desire deep in Shiro’s gut, the need to get as many of those helpless noises as he can.

“Get down here, sweetheart,” Shiro says, gripping Keith’s arms and tugging so he’s stretched out besides Shiro on the bed. He moves him so easy, covering Keith’s slight frame with the bulk of his own. It never ceases to make his blood go hot. Shiro shoves a hand up under Keith’s huge sweater and grips at the meat of one perfect pec. Keith shudders against Shiro’s mouth, so Shiro finds Keith’s nipple with his thumb and rubs at it, then pinches it lightly between thumb and forefinger so Keith lets out a muffled squeak.

“Oh, _oh_ , that feels good” Keith sighs out, momentarily overwhelmed enough that his head rocks back, mouth falling open as Shiro rubs and tweaks the little nub of flesh between his fingers. Keith makes an aborted move with one hand towards his crotch. Shiro’s eyes flick down a second before Keith’s reaching for him, shoving their hips close so he can rock their hardening dicks together.

 The midday light’s heating up the room enough that Shiro’s already overheating. He lets Keith go so he can shove the covers away, then sits up so he can push Keith to his stomach, straddling Keith’s back.

“ _Oh_ ,” Keith says, breath puffing out faster now, excited, and Shiro wants to eat up that single sound like it might fuel him for the next week.

“Get this off,” Shiro says, pushing at the fabric of Keith’s sweater to bare the pale expanse of his back. Keith whines at the interruption, probably wanting it right now, aching for it like he says he does for Shiro’s cock, for the stretch and fill of it. He wiggles between Shiro’s thighs as he divests himself of the sweater and the shirt underneath. He throws the lot in a heap on the floor.

“You little brat,” Shiro whispers, filthy sweet as he leans down to kiss Keith, who turns eagerly into the touch, a kitten-soft moan his only response.

A second more and Keith’s rocking back against Shiro. The first couple of movements are futile, then the plush swell of his ass successfully finds Shiro’s crotch and Keith arches back eagerly against Shiro’s hard dick, tilting his hips up off the bed to do so.

“Fuck me, come on. Fuck me,” Keith breathes out, twisting in Shiro’s hold, and Shiro nearly laughs at his naked eagerness. He reaches back and pulls his pants down to reveal the naked, beautiful swell of his ass and the pale backs of his thighs. Shiro grips a handful of flesh and squeezes appreciatively. Keith gasps and moans, curving his back to offer more.

“What an ass on you, baby,” Shiro says, squeezing again, slapping at the pale flesh to watch it pink up just as pretty as the rest of him. He grabs Keith’s ass again, this time with both hands, and parts his cheeks gently to reveal the pink furl of his hole, reaching between to press at it gently with his flesh thumb while his left hand keeps Keith parted open.

“Want me to touch this, baby? This sweet little thing here?”

Keith moans open mouthed against the sheets, and rocks his hips back fitfully in Shiro’s grasp.

“Yes. Touch it, please. _Uhn_ \- ”

Shiro moves the flat of his thumb gently against Keith’s entrance, not rubbing so he can avoid friction, but pressing just enough so he can watch it tighten and relax under the promise of his touch. Keith squirms impatiently under him.

“ _Shiro_.”

“Alright, Jesus,” Shiro says, ready to rut right against Keith’s ass like an animal. He leans over quickly and shoves a hand down between the mattress and bottom frame, searching until his fingers encounter hard plastic.

Keith’s watching with his cheek mashed against the covers when he turns back, pink staining the tops of his cheekbones, swiveling his hips restlessly against the bed. Shiro wishes he could frame him like a picture, have him hold the pose and steal an ounce of his talent so he could paint him his damn self.

He uncaps the lube and shoves his sweatpants down low enough to take himself out and slick up. He spreads a tiny dollop more at Keith’s entrance.

“Mmm,” Keith says at the feeling, and cants his hips to tilt his ass up for more. He shoves a hand down and starts jerking himself slowly as Shiro pushes two fingers inside slow and deep as they’ll get, wetting up Keith’s insides.

“Do it how I like it,” Keith sighs as Shiro lines himself up. He pushes up so he’s on all fours and it's easier for Shiro to reach forward and card his fingers gently through Keith’s hair.

“Baby, that’s a given,” Shiro says.

Then he tightens his grasp on Keith’s hair and pulls as his cock pushes inside.

Keith’s mouth falls open silently. A hot little gasp escapes as Shiro continues pushing in, Keith’s wet hole stretching around his dick.

“Fuck. Oh, fuck,” Keith says.

Shiro groans as he bottoms out. Keith’s supporting himself on both hands as Shiro pulls him back down on his cock, and Keith’s own dick swings heavy and helpless between his legs, slapping audibly against the flat of his stomach as Shiro starts to fuck him.

“Oh, oh, oh,” Keith is saying in tandem with Shiro’s thrusts. He keens when Shiro tightens the hold on his hair and pulls back every now and then, then grunts and shifts to find all the good spots inside him when Shiro lets go.

“Baby that’s all you needed, huh. You missed this when I was gone? Needed me to come home and fuck you?”

“Yeah. Shiro. I did,” Keith says, eyes half shut as he rocks back into Shiro’s thrusts, heedless of his own heavy, dangling cock, “need you all the time. I missed you - oh -”

Keith tightens up, back bowing as he starts to come, so Shiro grabs Keith’s hips with both hands and thrusts inside him harder, making the most of it. Keith cries and keens, cock spilling on the sheet underneath, his tight hole spasming and clutching around Shiro’s cock until Shiro groans and spills up inside him, milked by that molten, tight heat.

He goes slack against Keith’s prone form a second later, then slumps down besides Keith, throwing an arm around Keith’s heaving chest. Keith has his eyes shut and his mouth open, awash in the silent, last ebbing wave of ecstasy.

When he opens his eyes Shiro’s still watching.

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Fine. You tire me out.”

“You asked for it,” Keith says, attempting to rib Shiro.

He gasps as Shiro catches his hand and yanks him forward, laughter muffling against Shiro’s lips as they kiss for a long while more.

*

When they’re both showered and dressed again and sitting in the wide open space of the living room, Shiro feels a little silly to bring last night’s weirdness out, like shining a light under the bed to reveal the monster had been nothing but a tangle of dustbunnies.

Keith’s standing in his studio, which is what they call the space between the end of the sofa in the living room and the width of the wooden island in the kitchen. Charcoal sketches litter the top of his drafting table. He keeps his supplies on a ceramic work bench nearby, while works in further stages of progress line the surface of a cheap plastic folding table.

Shiro spreads the Eldridge case across the low coffee table in the living room. From an evidence bag he pulls out Lisa’s phone, and sets it to charge in the nearest wall socket. According to her mother Lisa was set to work Monday morning, had stayed home Sunday night to rest, and was set to meet up with Mrs. Eldridge Monday evening after her shift. Two of the three events hadn’t checked out. She’d missed her meeting with Mrs. Eldridge. And she’d never made it home Sunday night according to her roommate, a petite, sharp-eyed girl who’d squinted at Shiro through the gap of their chain locked door, responding to his queries with clipped answers as he stood in the hallway, refused entry.

“I already told the cops everything,” she’d snapped at Shiro as he showed his driver’s license.

“I’m just here to help fill in the gaps. You told Lisa’s mother she hadn’t come home Sunday night, right? Uh, Cindy, is it?”

Cindy’s mouth had twisted as she considered.

“Yeah. That’s what I said.”

“Can I?” Shiro had asked, gesturing with a nod of his head beyond the open gap of the door. “This would be a lot easier inside. Startin to feel like a jerk out here.”

“You’re not a cop, and your name’s not on the lease. I don’t have to do anything.”

“Right. You’re right,” Shiro had said, laughing to ease the tension. Difficult interviews were to be expected. When they were the only sole renter with access to Lisa’s possessions it proved to be a sizeable obstacle. He had the option of pushing the issue and meeting a slammed door to the face or trying to get as much information out of her as he could. She’d verified most of Mrs. Eldridge’s information, with one important exception, she’d had a name and number for Lisa’s companion that night; Jamie.

He’d then asked the doorman if and when he’d last seen Lisa, and he’d provided Shiro with a time of departure five hours earlier than the time Mrs. Eldridge said Lisa would be home, along with a description of a thin, loudly dressed companion. Shiro had asked at the corner store down the street in the direction the doorman pointed, then at the next one a block down, and the next, until an attendant had said yes, two people of that description had stopped here briefly.

“Can you tell me anything about her friend? What did he look like?” Shiro had asked.

The attendant shrugged. He was a foot shorter than Shiro, who hunched his shoulders down both from the cold and because he knew how it made him seem, not as convincingly trustworthy and harmless as Keith could make it, but close enough.

“Tall. Very skinny. Purple hair,” the attendant had said. Then he’d pointed vaguely at a battered corkboard to his left.

“What?” Shiro had asked, trying to elucidate the object of the attendant’s gesture.

“He had that on his hand, big blue stamp,” the attendant said, and tapped a thick index finger against a glossy flyer, one amongst a multitude of others screaming for attention on the packed board. An advertisement for a new club on the edge of where the nearby campus met the trendier part of town. For how busy the city was, this particular college seemed to float peacefully through the miasma of crime and casual violence that littered any town of this size. There was the one brief lockdown at the college a few years before in response to what turned out to be a false alarm. The last missing person’s case Shiro remembers is from years before, a sophomore younger than Lisa. Caroline Hensky. She’d turned out to be a Senator’s daughter, which is probably why it made headlines at the time, though he hadn’t realized it. Forgone anonymity in death. She’d stared out at Shiro, doe-eyed and solemn in the senior picture that had been plastered all over downtown and on the evening news.

He’d bent over to get a better look at the logo at the top of the flyer; a simple Meander design.

“Are you sure that’s the place?” Shiro had asked, making a show of squinting at the swirling type. “Kinda looks like it could be anything, don’t you think?”

The attendant had grunted noncommittally.

“How do you know he was going there?”

“Because he pointed at the sign and said ‘I’m going there. Woo hoo,’” the attendant deadpanned.

“Well that’s one way of knowing,” Shiro had said, then scuffed his toe into the tile floor. “So uh, you got some security tapes I can look at?”

The tapes had checked out, dancing and all, and Shiro had his first good, albeit grainy look at Jamie. Which had led to Sunday night at _Verve_ , the club with the minimalist, futuristic design and the ear bleeding music.

Lisa’s phone buzzes on in the background, charged enough for use. Shiro gets up from his seat to crouch down beside the outlet, thumbing the lockscreen open with a swipe. Pretty trusting, and lucky for him, there wasn’t a passcode involved. He glances up at Keith who’s still at his easel, a slight frown marring his smooth forehead as he moves his brush across the canvas.

Shiro scrolls through recent and missed calls, copying down the number to ‘Jenn Boss’ onto his own phone. He opens the Maps app and squints at the last location in the search bar, zooming in on the red pin still fixed to the map. _Vera’s Face and Dress_ , reads the little bubble attached to the top of the pin. He makes note of the address, then spends some time sifting through the rest of the calls and contacts, then the web browser's bookmarks and recent history, then takes a cursory scan through the rest of the apps.

“Going out again,” Shiro tells Keith an hour later, once he’s made careful note of the information he needs in his phone and in his small black Moleskine. He stores both items on his person, then grabs his coat from the bedroom and his boots from the entryway.

“Have fun,” Keith says absently. He stops and turns Shiro’s way, brush paused in mid-air. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Aces,” Shiro replies. He steps over and kisses Keith, who’s distracted for all of a second before pulling away to look into Shiro’s eyes.

“Hand to god,” Shiro says, then, “one more,” as he licks into Keith’s mouth again. He doesn’t stop until Keith’s moaning under his breath, and pressing into Shiro’s hands.

“Ugh, don’t get me started,” Keith says, and pulls away with a display of hardship. His lips are bruised from pink to red again, and he’s shamelessly begging with wide eyes.

“Alright, alright,” Shiro says, ‘cause he might not be able to take the puppy eyes any longer himself, and steps away.

He grins all the way out into the frosty, bitter cold.

*

The more he dwells on the information he’s already collected, the more Shiro can’t shake the unease from his conversation with Cindy, feeling stymied at the gate. He’s walking the familiar path to the station before he realizes it, dwelling on the cops who worked the case before him. He stands at the bottom of the broad front staircase for a while before moving up its concrete steps.

The inside is bright and busy. Shiro’s rounding the corner in front of booking when Hunk crosses his path, beaming at the sight of his old partner.

“Hey! Long time no see. You take that Eldridge case I sent your way?”

Shiro pauses in his greeting, meeting Hunk’s eyes in surprise.

“That was you?”

“Hell, yes.”

“No way, man. And yeah, I took it.”

“That’s what I’m talkin ‘bout,” Hunk says gleefully, tugging Shiro into a one armed hug, then thumping him on the back. “We’re in business, baby.”

“Thanks for that,” Shiro says, grateful and weirdly tongue tied for a second. “Yeah. I mean I am. In business. Although it’s slow going right now.”

“Hey, everyone’s slow to start.”

“I got that guy from the financial district and his wife.”

Hunk pulls a face. He takes Shiro’s arm and steers him down the long hallway.

“Business like this moves faster with referrals. You can find that cheating shit any day of the week. You need an open-shut case like this to really get things going. An easy win, man, know what I’m saying?”

“An open shut-case,” Shiro repeats blankly.

“That missing co-ed? She’s pulled that stunt twice before. Pull the travel receipts from her credit card history. She’ll be back to mommie dearest within the week.”

“Yeah her mother’s mentioned that she’d run away before,” Shiro says carefully. “The timing’s kinda weird for it.”

“No such thing as running away once you’re over 18. That’s when we call it starting over. Or, Doing Whatever the Fuck You Want. The quicker she learns that the better,” Hunk says. He tips his chin down in emphasis.

Shiro holds his tongue, reminded in the moment how the two of them could get like dogs over a bone. It’s the smell of the place too, so familiar he feels like he’s stuck on a line, being reeled back in time. Hunk’s a good friend, and a good cop, and he’d been good with helping Shiro in whatever he wanted to do outside of the force. He’d even set him up with a stint doing investigative work for a midsize journal whose circulation spread mostly in the suburbs. It had been a mundane sort of hell. Then Hunk had said, _it's time to be spread your wings a little_ , and hooked him on the idea of PI work. At the time Shiro’d told himself it was a happy medium on the spectrum of odd jobs he’d taken in the past.

Now Hunk taps Shiro’s shoulder, pulling him down to earth again.

“Everything okay?”

Shiro means to brush him off with an affirmative. Instead he says, “I don’t know,” which seems the more accurate of the two.

“Something happen?” Hunk says, honing in on Shiro. He tugs him towards an empty break room. Shiro turns away from Hunk and stares at crinkly packages of baked potato chips behind the glass of a vending machine.

“Is it Keith?”

“Keith’s fine,” Shiro says. He clears his throat, “I think - I think I’m seeing things.”

Shiro’s throat feels dry and he’s unable to meet Hunk’s gaze suddenly, even in the reflection. He stares into the depths of the vending machine. The distant sound of a door slams shut somewhere down the hallway. A desk bell rings.

“What kind of things?” Hunk asks quietly.

“Uh - stuff from the - I guess it has to do with the train,” Shiro says finally, giving Hunk the easy way out. He rubs at his forehead. Then he can’t help but give a part of it away. “I thought I saw a part of me...disappear. My hand a couple days ago. Just. Gone.”

He finally looks up to see Hunk staring fiercely at him, concern heavy in his eyes.

“You still seeing your doc? Told him about it?”

“No,” Shiro says with a shake of his head. He cards a hand sheepishly through his hair. But he thinks it’s more than that.

“I asked Lance and he said - they think I might be you know - a mutation,” Shiro pushes on.

Hunk’s frown vanishes. He laughs.

“Lance?” Hunk asks, with a snort, “Encyclopedia Brown and his jumped-up Tamagotchi? He’d tell you the sky was green if he thought that was something you wanted to hear.”

“I don’t _want_ to hear this. Do you think there’s a possibility it could be like a - like maybe they - “

“You got tested, right?” Hunk interrupts. He plants his hands on Shiro’s shoulders and looks him head on, gaze steady.

“Yeah.”

“Good. Then that’s what we call Case Closed, partner,” Hunk says. “Don’t think too hard about it. We all have our shit days. Enough to lose a marble or two. Or three.”

He claps Shiro on the shoulder, and when he looks Shiro’s way Shiro returns his smile, taking refuge in the fact that Hunk is usually right.

*

Shiro re-traces Lisa’s Monday schedule from the combined information as provided through Mrs. Eldridge, Cindy the belligerent roommate, and the contents of Lisa’s abandoned phone.

She’d had a reminder for 7:00AM Monday morning before work to ‘Return Burg. dress - Macy’s.’ He routes the closest ones within a five mile radius to her workplace and gets lucky in the Misses section of the third one. Yes, the sales associate remembers the young lady who’d bought the dress. No, nothing seemed peculiar or off. No, she hadn’t returned or received a refund. Now would the young man need help with anything in particular here at the store?

Shiro politely declines the offer, knowing when to take a hint, and leaves his card behind in case she thinks of anything else, or on the wild chance she saw Lisa again. 

He calls ahead to Lisa’s workplace on the subway. He waits for a five minute hold before the same voice answers again. Yes he can stop by now but Jennifer’s out for the day. He can call or drop by tomorrow morning. He crosses out ‘Jenn Boss’ and replaces it with _Jennifer Perkins - shift supervisor_ , in his notepad.

Between school and work as a barista, Shiro would think anyone leaving on a last minute trip could use all the petty cash they could get. It was unlikely she’d forget the dress, sitting like a cash prize in her closet. The sales associate had pointed the way and Shiro had checked the price tag at the store. Nearly 200 bucks was nothing to sneeze at.

The commute to Lisa’s college takes less than fifteen minutes. He walks a random path through campus before stopping to ask directions to the art department. It’s through luck he catches Lisa’s adviser in his office, a narrow, rectangular room with surprisingly minimal clutter and thin, high ceilings.

“Call me Victor,” the professor says, leaning down to shake Shiro’s hand. He looks almost comical folding his tall, large frame onto a desk chair that looks like it was made from a single piece of metal. Tasteful pottery lines an otherwise empty table near the windows.

“Yours?” Shiro asks. He walks closer to get a better look.

“I’m afraid so,” Victor says.

“Nice work,” Shiro says simply, wishing Keith were here to say something a little more profound.

“I work different mediums today but clay remains my favorite. On the wheel, you can keep a simple ball of clay in a perpetual state of transformation.”

Victor’s deep, solemn voice gives each word more gravitas than it deserves. Shiro thinks for a second he might have forgotten that he isn’t standing at the head of a lecture hall, imparting great truths. Also, Shiro could give less of a shit.

He hums noncommittally in response and turns Victor’s way again. “What can you tell me about Lisa?” Shiro asks.

“Lisa Eldridge?”

“Yeah, her.”

“She’s smart, beyond talented. Conscientious. Sensitive,” Victor says. He keeps his hands in his lap as he speaks. Shiro has the faint impression he’s being equally sized up. “A model student.”

“How often do you usually see her?”

“A little more frequently this time of the year,” Victor says, with an easy smile that invites Shiro in to laugh at him, as if to commiserate on a shared experience. At Shiro’s blank expression Victor gives a sweep of his hand. “Exams and all, her final project.”

For a moment Lisa appears in Shiro’s mind’s eye, perched before a canvas, its face turned from view.

“Mind if I take a look?” Shiro asks.

*

Victor leads the way to the studio in long, quick strides that have Shiro feeling much shorter than his considerable height.

Lisa’s work is in watercolor, unfinished canvases propped on easels and work benches. Shiro can’t help but think of Keith, starting off on his Crayola set as a kid, running odd jobs to save up for supplies as a scrawny teenager. Students look up as they enter the room then readily return to their work, the sounds of tools being manipulated and set down mixing with a stream of soft chatter.

Victor disappears to a side room to gather a missing canvas from the collection and Shiro finds himself drawn to the far end of the classroom where a glass display lines the back wall.

“Only the best and brightest,” Victor says when he returns, startling Shiro with his proximity. His eyes are shining as he surveys the artwork carefully exhibited behind spotless glass.

“Lisa in there?” Shiro asks. He watches the corners of Victor’s eyes lift.

“Yes,” Victor says. “She is.”

*

Shiro grabs a fish musubi to eat from a food truck on campus and fills in the rest of his notes in the shadow of a large, circular fountain. His meeting with Victor proved informative in a different way than expected. He brushes sticky rice off his lap and surveys the busy campus for a while, then closes his eyes and lets his mind wander. Lisa’s work floats towards him in a sea of black.

He walks to the nearest line to Lance’s house, getting off two stops short. The evening crowd fills the uneven sidewalks, rushing in and out of crowded groceries, butcher shops with paper wrapped packages, and bakeries selecting from piles of freshly baked goods stacked in the windows. A shop owner with large, amphibious eyes that take up most of his face meets Shiro’s gaze as he passes by, a thin forked tongue darting out between his lips.

Shiro buys produce and dairy items, meat for stews and soups, cans of baked beans and glass jars of jelly. His purchases weigh down both arms as he finishes, and by the time he makes it to the familiar dilapidated brick house the palm of each hand has gone numb.

The iron gate’s door is unlatched, swaying in the cold breeze.

“For fuck’s sake,” Shiro mutters, nudging it open with his foot.

He walks straight to the side entrance once more and leaves his burden at the kitchen door, pain flaring in his hand as awareness returns. He rotates his sore shoulders to relieve the tense muscles in his back, then takes a few steps back, leans down, and raps the knuckles of one fist against the tiny basement window. He knocks again in rapid succession. It’s not like any of the food will rot in this weather, but Shiro figures better inside than out. He’s not sure how often Lance goes without feeling the touch of direct sunlight on his face.

He leaves reasonably sure either Lance or CORAN has heard him, and takes the nearest train home.

*

Keith’s in the kitchen when Shiro gets home, slicing red bell peppers on a large wooden cutting board.

“Hey,” he says, with a happy smile, as soon as he’s spotted Shiro.

“What’s cookin?” Shiro asks.

He slips out of his boots at the door and hangs his coat on its proper hook.

“Come look for yourself,” is Keith’s easy reply. He holds the cutting board over an open pot on the stove, steam billowing up from its interior, and slides the sliced peppers down with the flat of his knife and into its boiling contents.

Shiro wraps his arms around Keith from behind as soon as he’s near enough. He leans down and presses his face in the crook of Keith’s neck, letting out a low, content sound.

“Long day?” Keith murmurs.

“Mmph,” Shiro says, “when can we eat?”

Keith laughs. He makes a half-hearted effort to escape Shiro’s grasp, and Shiro’s dick perks up at the soft press of Keith’s ass. Then Keith reaches up to card through the various bags of pasta in the cupboard.

“Look in the damn pot first.”

“I can tell from the smell. Goulash.”

“Ugh,” Keith says in disappointment, though Shiro can see from the side that he’s biting back a smile.

He leans forward to kiss at the corner of Keith’s lips.

“Here, let me help you with that,” Shiro says when he pulls away. He makes as if he’s deciding between _spirali_ and _farfella_ , while taking the opportunity to grind his hardening dick against Keith’s ass.

“Shiro. Jesus,” Keith says. His protest dies as Shiro makes a low noise and grinds insistently against him, sliding his hands up to cup Keith’s chest. A soft, excited gasp escapes Keith’s throat.

“I’m sorry, I can’t help it,” Shiro says, “I got this thing for uh – I got this thing for cooks.”

“Jeez. Shoulda told me that before you moved in with an artist.”

“It’s super embarrassing. I’ve never told anyone,” Shiro says, voice muffled as he kisses up the side of Keith’s neck.

Keith grips the edge of the counter with both hands, pasta-deciding efforts temporarily stalled. His eyelids flutter shut and he tilts his head back, resting it on Shiro’s shoulder in an open display, giving Shiro direct access to the delicious, soft skin of his throat. Shiro’s hard in his jeans, dick swollen and starting to ache as he swivels his hips, pressing against Keith’s soft, yielding flesh.

“What a cross – oh – what a cross to bear,” Keith says unsteadily.

“Yeah. Poor me. Can you help me? I need a little help with something.”

“Oh yeah? Let me guess, it’s the banana in your pocket?” Keith replies, smiling lazily as he tilts his head again for Shiro’s kisses.

Shiro huffs a laugh against Keith’s skin, but he isn’t deterred in the slightest.

“Please baby, it hurts so bad.”

Shiro pumps his hips in pointed reminder.

“Oh, shit,” Keith says. His knee knocks forward. A cabinet door judders in place below them. Shiro snakes a hand down to Keith’s crotch, finding his dick and giving it a firm squeeze through the fabric.

“Uh – ” Keith says, then he’s pushing Shiro’s hand away and twisting eagerly in his grasp, turning to face Shiro.

“What do you want?” he gasps, going on tiptoe to kiss at Shiro hungrily. He unbuttons Shiro’s shirt enough so he can kiss at his chest, licking the salt and sweat from his skin, moaning at the taste like he’s impossibly turned on. He kisses at the joint of Shiro’s right arm, where he’s musky from a day's sweat.

“You like that?” Shiro asks.

He cups the back of Keith’s head and grips his hair gently.

“Yeah,” Keith says, pulling back so his hands can find Shiro’s belt, tugging it open.

“Fuckin filthy,” Shiro says, and Keith’s face reddens further. “Come here.”

Shiro tugs Keith in to kiss the salt from his lips. Keith moans helplessly in acknowledgement.

“What do you want?” Keith asks again, desperate.

“I want your mouth on it,” Shiro says, murmuring against Keith’s wet lips. Keith gazes back, flushed and terribly turned on. “I want you to drop to your knees and put your mouth on it like a good boy. Help me relax, then you can serve me dinner. You want that? Got this all ready for me, huh. Thought about it waiting for me to get home?”

“Yeah,” Keith agrees dazedly. “I did.”

“Get on your knees, dirty boy,” Shiro murmurs, and Keith buckles like the sweetest thing, dropping to the floor in front of Shiro. He grips Shiro’s thighs and waits while Shiro undoes his fly and pulls himself out, length swollen and hard in his grip. Keith licks his lips at the sight of it.

Shiro gives himself a firm stroke.

“Open,” he says, and Keith’s red mouth readily parts.

Shiro cups the back of Keith’s head and angles his length so it can rub against Keith’s cheek, across his wet, parted lips. A tiny hot breath escapes Keith’s throat.

“Show it how good you are,” Shiro says. Keith’s eyelids flutter shut in assent and he takes to Shiro’s cock, mouthing up one side of it, then the other. He sucks and laves until the length of Shiro’s dick is shiny-wet, then suckles softly at the head. Shiro bites back a groan, fingers going tight in Keith’s hair. His dick jerks, precome slipping from the tip. Keith eagerly laps it up. His hand comes up to stroke at Shiro’s length, and it’s with a demonstration of will that Shiro decides to stop him.

He pulls Keith back with the hand in his hair so Keith’s head is tilted up. His eyes are wet.

“Wanna swallow this dick like a good boy?” Shiro asks. He strokes his dick for show, watching Keith’s eyes skitter down almost like he can’t help it. Shiro bites back a smile.

“Yeah. I do.”

“What do you want?”

“Please let me swallow it,” Keith says, blinking rapidly. “Call me that again.”

“What? Call you good? Tell you how pretty you look asking for it?”

“Yeah.

“You gotta behave for me first,” Shiro says, he grips the base of his dick and steadies himself. “Open your mouth. Wider.”

Keith does as he’s told, pink, wet lips parting. Shiro lines the head of his dick against Keith’s open mouth, then slowly feeds the length in. Keith’s immediately good about wrapping his lips around his teeth. His eyelids flutter shut and he moans as Shiro presses further, head tilted up in Shiro’s grip.

“Oh that’s good, sweetheart. So fuckin good,” Shiro sighs. He cups the back of Keith’s skull for better leverage, then begins pumping his hips slowly, fucking Keith’s hot, wet mouth in a steady motion. Keith sucks dutifully on the upstroke, a tight heat that has Shiro groaning and cursing in turns. Shiro starts holding Keith down longer, hitting the back of his throat and rocking in with tiny motions. When Keith gags, Shiro lets him go and pulls out so he can gasp and breathe. His eyes have gone liquid, wet dotting the corners with unshed tears.

“Oh that’s nice,” Shiro says, thumbing at the wet mess of Keith’s mouth. Keith chases the movement and sucks the digit in, licking at the underside. “I’m gonna put it in real deep this time, sweetheart, okay? It’s hurtin’ real bad now.”

“Okay, Shiro,” Keith says wetly, voice rough with use. He opens his mouth and waits for Shiro to slide in, moaning around Shiro’s thick length as he pushes even farther than before. Keith gags as Shiro hits the back of his throat but keeps his head down, determinedly taking another inch, nostrils flaring as he struggles to breathe.

“That’s my good boy,” Shiro grits out, jerking his hips, hard, swollen dick pumping in that wet, silken heat. “That’s it. That’s my - uh - ” He grunts almost noiselessly as his cock gives a sudden jerk and spills, twitching as it pumps down Keith’s throat. “Shit - uh - ” Shiro’s vision darkens. He pulls out as he’s still coming with a wet, sloppy sound and Keith immediately dives in, licking up the wet sides and sucking at the tip, stripes of come landing messily on his lips and face. Shiro anchors himself on one of Keith’s broad shoulders until he can breathe again, then moans through the aftershocks.

“Slow, slow, baby,” Shiro says, and Keith takes it easy, pressing delicate kitten licks to Shiro’s softening length. He sucks once more, loose and gentle on Shiro’s softening length before letting him go, chest heaving, face wrecked, looking up at Shiro with the most open, grateful expression. Like Shiro’s done something incredible.

Shiro rubs a thumb through the wet mess of Keith’s lips before leaning down to kiss him, cupping Keith’s head in his hands with gentle care, chest swelling with an immense, helpless feeling as Keith trembles and sighs.

*

Shiro takes Keith in the living room after dinner, because he’s only human and needs a minimal amount of time to elapse from being sucked dry to recover. They eat Keith’s gourmet Goulash over egg noodles off of paper plates, sitting tailor style on the soft, shag rug laid out between their two sofas. Keith tells Shiro about the new kid he’s tutoring and the fancy, ridiculous house their lessons will take place in.

“You won’t have to do that no more. Once work kicks in,” Shiro says. He stretches his leg out underneath the table so his foot finds Keith’s shin, and nudges him there gently.

Keith snorts.

“You say that like it’s some unbearable hardship,” Keith says.

“Just want you to do the work that makes you happy,” Shiro says.

Keith’s eyes soften.

“Well, we can’t do that yet,” Keith says, simply.

On one of Shiro’s bad days the familiar conversation would be the juncture before a nasty fight. Now he only felt the words settling in his gut with the simplicity of any mundane, ugly truth, and he couldn’t deny it as the main impetus in the back of his mind these days to start picking up better cases.

“Soon enough,” Shiro replies succinctly, ducking down to fork a noodle from his plate and into his mouth. He chews and watches Keith.

“Well it’s good for me to get my name out there anyways. Who knows, one of their parents might take an interest and give me some crazy commission,” Keith says, and Shiro can see the game he wants to play.

“That better be the only thing they take an interest in,” Shiro replies. He wiggles his toes in between Keith’s crossed legs and Keith unfolds them lazily, grinning.

“Oh yeah? Or I could just happen to inspire someone more creatively inclined. Then I could get paid on retainer.”

“Who’s outdated now?” Shiro says. “He’ll just have to find his inspiration somewhere else.”

He finds Keith’s crotch with this foot and presses there gently. Keith jolts a little where he sits. His legs fall open under the table and Shiro feels a responding pressure as Keith rocks into the touch.

“What would you do?” Keith asks, a little breathlessly now. He steadies his hands on the coffee table. Underneath, his cock is swelling under Shiro’s ministrations. Shiro rubs the arch of his foot on Keith’s dick and watches him bite at his bottom lip.

Shiro raises an eyebrow.

“You need me to say it?”

Keith’s face goes pink.

“Yes.”

“I’d kill them all before they ever laid a finger on you,” Shiro says, without missing a beat, and it’s an exaggeration more for Keith’s benefit than his own but he isn’t surprised when he realizes how deeply and calmly he feels it. He applies more pressure on Keith’s dick, it must be aching with how big he is now. He feels a damp spot begin to form at a point in the fabric.

“That got you wet, sweetheart?” Shiro asks lowly.

“You know what you do to me,” Keith says, hips pressing into Shiro’s touch. He’s rocking harder into it now, clearly unsatisfied but oh so easy to rile up.

“What do you want?”

“Take me here,” Keith replies, instantly.

“Right here on the rug?” Shiro asks. He moves his foot from side to side, pushing Keith’s hard dick around in his sweats, playing with it. Keith jolts and moans, twisting his hips helplessly into the motion.

“Why?”

“Cause you don’t want to wait to take me anywhere else.” Keith flushes. “You can’t wait.”

“You’re damn right about that,” Shiro says, and he pulls back from the coffee table. They both scramble into motion. Shiro pulls the table back as Keith turns and shimmies out of his sweats, flushing with excitement. Shiro crawls into the open splay of Keith’s thighs and stuffs his hand between the sofa cushions until he finds the lube they’ve stashed there, because his sex life with Keith is utterly ridiculous.

He shoves his jeans down to mid-thigh and slicks up his cock, which quickly swells in interest. Keith watches with a rapt expression, his own hand going down to stroke his flushed, pretty cock, finally free from its confines.

“You want it on your back, baby?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s sweet,” Shiro says. Keith’s quiet, responding whine doesn’t escape him, or the way he squeezes at his swollen flesh.

“Call me what you said in the kitchen,” Keith whispers quickly as Shiro crawls over him, steadying himself with one hand to the floor and the other lining his dick up to Keith’s hole. Keith pulls his legs up so his ankles cross loosely at the small of Shiro’s back.

“My sweet boy?” Shiro asks, darting down to kiss at Keith’s lips. He feels Keith nodding rapidly more than sees him.

“Uh huh. Please. Call me that.”

“Don’t have to beg for me to tell you how sweet you are,” Shiro says between kisses. He starts to pepper them down Keith’s jaw down to his throat, “How pretty. How much you want it always. Got a slutty ache in you always, huh?”

“ _Shiro_ ,” Keith squeaks out, flushing pink.

Shiro laughs, low and mean. He loves it, the way Keith squirms at the words, ashamed but desperate to hear them.

“Want me to make it better?”

“Yeah. Yeah. _Oh_ ,” Keith breathes out, hand moving on his dick as Shiro pushes in, breath puffing out quicker and quicker against the side of Shiro’s face. His hole flexes and clenches around Shiro as he pushes in, and Shiro lets out a groan of pleasure as he sinks inside.

Keith responds with a soft, helpless sound, tilting his head back as Shiro settles to the hilt. He grinds against Keith once he’s seated as deep as he can go, arms taking most of his weight as he watches Keith gasp and groan.

“Move,” Keith pleads.

Shiro obliges, pulling out on a long stroke and slamming back in.

“Oh!”

“That’s my boy. Take it so sweet, baby,” Shiro says, grunting as he repeats the movement. Keith cries out soft and heady, intoxicatingly raw and open. Shiro speeds up and slows down in turns, taking his sweet time, and Keith matches him, sometimes stroking himself to Shiro’s thrusts, or simply cupping his balls and cock as Shiro uses him.

Shiro knows Keith’s close when his sighs go high and airy, in sync with every time Shiro nails him. He curls down to kiss at Keith’s open mouth, and Keith’s too close now to properly reciprocate.

“Where do you want it?” Shiro asks near Keith’s ear.

“In me,” Keith answers. “Leave it in me.”

Shiro jerks forward with a few last, sudden thrusts. Keith keens and jerks underneath him, spilling into his hand and Shiro follows on his heels. He pants open mouthed against Keith’s neck, slumping into his arms, chest heaving, whole body flushed in heat.

Keith whines when Shiro makes to move, arms tightening around his sides.

“Don’t.”

“I’m crushing you.”

“I like it,” Keith says simply.

Shiro laughs.

“Ain’t I the luckiest.”

*

Shiro’s in high spirits the next morning, even though Keith’s already left for his tutoring session before Shiro wakes up. He feels a twinge of regret at not having the opportunity to see Keith off, if only to ogle the way he cleans up for these jobs like an overgrown schoolboy.

“You look like someone ordered you from a catalogue,” Shiro had said, the first time Keith dressed in his twill blazer and ironed slacks, black leather loafers shining.

“Good,” Keith said, fiddling with his cuffs, “that’s exactly the impression I’m going for.”

Shiro’s whistling softly to himself forty minutes later as he rounds the corner to Lisa’s work. The cafe is nestled between a bank and a fancy boutique with a French name. A woman is seated at one of the two round metal tables out front, black dreadlocks visible down her back, stockinged leg jittering in the cold.

Shiro pauses before the exterior, noting the busy movement of employees behind the counter inside. They’re dressed all in black, with short blue aprons and tiny boat shaped hats.

As Shiro puts his hand to the door the seated woman calls out.

“Mr. Shirogane?”

Shiro pauses and turns to the side.

“I’m Jennifer,” she says, leaning forward in her seat.

“Shiro. Mr. Shirogane is my father,” Shiro says, leaving the door unopened. He sits at the empty seat across from Jennifer. She nods once, then reaches inside her coat pocket, gloved hand withdrawing with a cigarette. Her eyes flick down once to the gleaming metal of Shiro’s hand.

“Lisa’s mom described you over the phone. She’s been bugging me to tell you every single useless detail I know so I’m leaving it all out here on the off chance it’ll be any help.”

Lisa’s words muffle slightly as she sticks the unlit cigarette in her mouth. She pats at her pockets with both hands.

“And so I don’t have to bother you again, hopefully,” Shiro says, with an understanding smile. He extends his own lighter.

“Oh, thanks,” Jennifer says, relieved. She curls her hands around the flame as it flicks to life and sucks once with practiced ease, the end burning a bright orange as her lips go tight.

“When did you last see Lisa?” Shiro asks, pocketing the lighter. He craves his own cigarette now, watching Jennifer turn to blow away smoke, but he tries to save them for when he’s really desperate, and with the proffered help he’s hopefully already established some rapport, small though it may be.

“Thursday,” Jennifer offers instantly, “she worked the evening shift until 10PM and closed with myself and two others.”

“When was she scheduled after that?”

“Monday,” Jennifer says. Then her eyes skate away and back. “Uh, Friday, too.”

“Of the same week?”

“Week before. I didn’t - I didn’t tell Mrs. Eldridge. But it’s whatever now. You get to decide what you want to do with that information.”

“Where was she Friday? When she was supposed to be at her shift.”

“How the hell do I know. I thought she was - um - it seemed kinda serious. Like, clinical? She said she was getting a friend to go with her someplace. Seemed pretty torn up about it.” Jennifer gives a small, uncomfortable shrug. “To be really super honest you know, I thought she might be getting an abortion.”

She makes a face and flicks her ash to the side.

“Did she have a boyfriend?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Who was the friend?”

“What friend?”

“The one she mentioned accompanying her on Friday.”

“Um. Don’t know his name. Tall kid. Has one of them X mutations but not, like, a super scary one?”

“What are the scary ones?” Shiro asks evenly, before he can help himself.

Jennifer blinks at him in surprise. Then laughs.

Shiro forces himself to offer a responding smile, like it’s an inside joke. _Stick to the line of questioning, idiot._

“Purple hair?” Shiro asks.

Jennifer nods her head eagerly.

“That’s him. Came around once to drop her off for a shift. I could tell she hadn’t slept a second that night.”

Jennifer’s lips twist bitterly and all Shiro has to do is frown a little, nod sympathetically, and with the right questions the rest comes tumbling out. Lisa had been weird for a month prior, Jennifer says, missing days or dropping in late, throwing up in the bathroom on her morning shifts. Clearly something was troubling with her and she was hanging with new company, but the disappearance still doesn’t sit right with Jennifer either. _Her defense is in three weeks_ , Jennifer says, and _no one just takes off before their final project._

Shiro gets a copy of Lisa’s schedule from Jennifer, who disappears inside and reemerges tying her own blue apron and pressing a folded piece of paper to Shiro’s hands.

Both Lisa’s classes and work shifts are helpfully outlined in multi-colored blocks. Jennifer’s scrawled a name, building, and room number at the top in thin, decorative script, a carbon copy of the hand lettering advertising the drink of the day on the shop’s chalkboard. Lisa’s thesis advisor. Victor Monroe - Miller Hall - 105B.

*

For the second time, Shiro finds a missing piece to Mrs. Eldridge’s information. It doesn’t surprise him. No one in Lisa’s age group is probably that particularly forthcoming with their parents about their business, so first finding Jamie, and now the missing shifts and bouts of sickness from Jennifer serve to paint a more detailed picture.

Shiro walks to his office, shoving the Eldridge case to the back of his mind while he mulls over the day’s schedule. He has one long-standing case on the back burner, a venture capitalist who treated Shiro’s work like an open tab at a bar. He was sure his wife was cheating on him - mostly because, she actually was - and for six weeks now Shiro had standing orders to provide the evidence. As it turned out the wife was almost as equally high on the totem pole at work, and didn’t have a lot of time or imagination to meet her lover except for every Tuesday evening, 3PM, like clockwork. Shiro would take his camera, snap the pictures of them arriving at the hotel, wait in the cafe across the street nursing a cup of coffee for an hour or two, then snap the requisite pictures of their departure. It was boring as shit and just as predictable, and although every instinct itched to close the case, the client seemed to enjoy torturing himself too much - or else needed an entirely excessive amount of evidence for his divorce case.

Shiro’s office used to be Shiro’s apartment, and his Aunt Ruth’s before that for many years. It still has a mattress on the floor and a functioning kitchen, but they’d taken most of his possessions out when he’d moved in with Keith, including the fridge, which meant the one time a few months before when he’d gone through a rough spot and spent a few nights here he’d survived on Chinese takeout for lunch and dinner, with breakfast in the form of protein bars eaten hastily at his desk.

They’d knocked in the wall between the former living room and formal dining room to open up the space but everywhere Shiro looks memories still hang like picture frames on a wall. There’s the spot next to the kitchen entrance where Shiro had spilled Aunt Ruth’s bottle of vanilla extract on New Year’s Eve and the cracked lintel in the tiny foyer where Shiro had swung a step ladder on his shoulder one summer between construction jobs and rammed it into the plaster.

It had taken him a record breaking three dates to get Keith up here, and after that another three of making out on his couch like a pair of horny teenagers, Keith making his excuses and leaving before they’d rounded third base, and Shiro making it as far as the bathroom afterwards before grabbing his aching dick and spilling into the sink.

The first floor houses a laundry mat - Shiro’s been accosted for a spare quarter more times than he can count - and down the hall from Shiro’s own office is a home salon. The rest of the neighbors are new and too involved in the daily grind of their lives to get in Shiro’s business. The tenants that can still remember when Shiro was whistling every other word through the missing gap of his front teeth have long since passed, or been cajoled into moving by their extended families to retirement homes.

It hadn’t been that long before that stepping within these walls felt like sinking through a sand trap. Now he can push aside the mire of memories by giving his job his singular focus. He calls Mrs. Eldridge first and prods her on Jamie and Lisa’s strange behavior, giving away as little has he can. She’s eager for information, and Shiro can almost picture as he’d seen her last, wringing her small hands in her lap. He expects a call any day now telling him Lisa is back, and _thank you for your help but all’s well now_ , so he keeps to what he knows best, and forgoes giving her any cause to jump to conclusions, feeling her worry through the line like a tangible thing.

Nothing new from Lisa’s mother, which he’d expected going in. Shiro works through lunch, calling Lisa’s nearest contacts, who more or less confirm her class and social schedule in bits and pieces. The weeks before her disappearance begin to color in, a typical, busy college senior approaching finals week and deadlines, spending most of her time in the studio, working in the hours she has between classes and home.

After a couple of hours Shiro grabs an energy bar and steps away from his desk. He finds the art department’s number in his call history, shoving his phone between ear and shoulder as he unlocks the safe in the bedroom to grab his camera and gear. Hold music plays. After a moment he somehow ends up transferred to the registrar, and spends a confusing five minutes before he’s linked back to the art department’s administration.

_Mr. Monroe has a busy schedule today, would Shiro meet him this evening instead?_

“He’s got a class that late?” Shiro asks in surprise, opening his moleskin to the calendar on the first two pages. His pencil hovers over the afternoon slot. He’s regretting making the call now. Things have proven to be much easier when he shows up unannounced. 

“Everyone’s quite busy this time of year,” is the even reply. Shiro has the distinct feeling he’s not the first, annoying call of the day.

“I got you,” he says in reply, then repeats the time and location as he jots it down and gives his thanks.

A lancing ache twinges in his jaw as he hangs up. He stretches his neck to the other side, then rotates both shoulders and stands up, gathering his belongings. Maybe he can make a show of it tonight and get Keith to massage his back out. He smiles as he pulls a glove over his metal hand, indulging the line of thought as he locks up the office and heads out.

*

With a Cafe Americano and a corner window seat, Shiro waits for Mrs. Venture Capitalist and her scrawny, executive administrative assistant turned illicit lover to arrive. This was his client’s second marriage and the experienced businessman had enough self-awareness at least, of the nature of the beginnings to his own relationship, to recognize the signs when the tables were turned. Shiro could tell his own investigation was just the beginning to what would end up being a long, bitter, drawn out process ahead for his client. He was thankful he’d have no further part in it.

He spots the familiar silhouette of his client’s wife striding down the street, her lover a few paces behind. He lifts his camera and takes a series of quick shots.

Shiro’s mostly hidden by a large decorative table with three boxed sets of carefully trimmed bonsai, and if he’s noticed he knows no one will think twice. The couple enter the building and Shiro sets his camera down. Now comes the dull, interminable wait where he watches the front door like a hawk until they depart. Not for the first time he wishes he could do the same, fuck off for a nooner whenever he felt like it, interrupt Keith at his easel to turn him over the back of the sofa, show up at one of the fancy houses he tutors in, set whatever snot nosed kid he was teaching in front if the TV and get Keith muffling his sighs and moans in the dark of a hallway closet.

His phone vibrates in his pocket, and the fantasy dissipates. Shiro keeps his eyes on the street as he answers. His jaw is aching again.

“Shiro,” he says once he picks up.

“Let me guess,” Hunk’s warm voice says in Shiro’s ear.

Shiro sighs, not without good humor.

“Don’t,” he says.

“You’re on your third latte - “

“Americano. And it’s my second.”

“Damn.”

“Did you call to check up on my drinking habits?”

“Actually, no. I called because we got an inquiry from a Dr. Monroe. Wanted to know your affiliation with the case.”

Shiro pauses where he’s been idly fiddling with his coffee cup.

“Is that so.”

“Just wanted to make sure you don’t press it too hard.”

“I know how to do my job.”

“Okay well, we’re not looking to ruffle these particular feathers.”

“I’m not a part of ‘we.’”

“Don’t have to tell me twice.”

A pause.

“Allura pals with this guy?” Shiro asks. Hunk’s silver haired department chief had connections in the strangest places. Shiro frowns, thinking of Victor’s easy smile.

“You know how it is,” Hunk says, which means _yes_.

“I won’t poke too hard. Just enough.”

Hunk chuckles.

“Alright. Enjoy your day, spymaster.”

*

An hour and a half later Shiro has another set of harried, departure photos in his camera’s hard drive and a bad case of caffeine jitters. His jaw’s aching something fierce as he packs up his gear and dumps the empty coffee cup in the trash.

He stops by the dress shop, Lisa’s last location searched on her phone. A hand painted sign rattles on the door as he opens it. Reels of brightly colored fabric crowd the store from end to end and floor to ceiling. A diminutive woman eyes Shiro from behind the counter, her silver hair piled into an Edwardian-style bun, gnarled fingers resting on a stack of paperwork, pen poised in hand. She has a familiar accent, w’s hardened to sound like v’s.

After a few minutes and with the right questions Shiro has the carbon paper from Lisa’s receipt in his hands. She’d bought two sets of multicolored stage makeup, and a bottle of flesh toned body paint.

“Mix to get the shade you want,” the eponymous shop owner says, gesturing in a circle motion over her face, as Shiro holds the palette in his hands.

Shiro stares at the wells of paint in their clear plastic box and thinks of Jamie’s skin; mixing and swirling in ever changing color under dancing lights.

*

By the time Shiro gets to _Verve_ his jaw’s gone entirely numb. He pushes through the anxious twist of his stomach, and smokes a cigarette near the back employee exit until the door swings open on a cloud of perfume and excited chatter, two dancers in downy winter coats brushing past, taking no notice of Shiro as he flicks his cigarette to the side and slips inside.

He finds Jamie in his dressing room, hunched over a vanity mirror framed by bright, round yellow lights, elbow settled on its pockmarked surface to steady the thin eye brush in hand.

“Leave it on the dresser by the door,” Jamie says, without glancing up from his reflection. Then his eyes meet Shiro’s in the mirror. “Oh. How the fuck did you get in here?”

“Bribed the bouncer.”

“Chuck would never.”

“Through the power of manners and charm.”

“Un-fucking-likely,” Jamie replies.

“How come you didn’t tell me about Vera’s?” Shiro asks easily, foregoing an answer. He leans against the doorframe. A small muscle in Jamie’s jaw ticks.

“I buy a lot of stage makeup,” Jamie replies easily. Shiro’s phone buzzes in his pocket. Bangles fall from Jamie’s wrist down the middle of his forearm in a tinkle of sound as he waves his arm to indicate his surroundings. “I’m a performer if you haven’t noticed.”

Shiro pushes off the wall with his heel and reaches back in his pocket.

“You can’t smoke in here,” Jamie says instantly, sitting up straighter in his chair. He points at a sign near Shiro’s right.

“No Smoke Zone,” Shiro reads. He shrugs. Sticks his smokes back in his pocket. “Can we make it a No Lie Zone as well?”

“I didn’t lie to you,” Jamie says, through gritted teeth.

“But you didn’t tell me the whole truth neither. You know something that Mrs. Eldridge doesn’t, something about why Lisa was acting those last few days. Missing work. Feeling sick. What’d she have, Jamie? She get in trouble?”

Jamie snorts.

“What was the makeup for?” Shiro asks quietly. Jamie goes stock still. “Pretty heavy duty stuff. The body paint.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“I just want to help.”

“She doesn’t need your help,” Jamie says. He twists in his chair. “I don’t know where she is, okay? That’s the truth.”

“Jamie,” Shiro presses on, and it’s like he can feel the tipping point before it gives, “I just need to know - ”

Jamie’s out of his chair in the blink of an eye, moving faster than Shiro would have anticipated.

“You don’t need to know _shit_ ,” Jamie hisses, inches from Shiro’s face. His skin is changing, glowing, a mix of burgundy shot with yellow, like ink dropped in a glass of water, bleeding outward. “You don’t know what it’s like to live like this. Stuck to fucking Mutant Town or living like a goddamn circus freak if you’re lucky. So I helped her hide it. And I’d do it again.”

The verification of Shiro’s suspicions settles like a weight in his stomach. Jamie jerks back and turns away.

“What was it?” Shiro asks. A multitude of worst case scenarios run rapidly through his mind. Retribution for perceived or possible harm, certainly. An ugly backlash against a young mutant clumsily wielding her newly manifested power.

Jamie snorts, folding his arms at his middle. He sits against the back of a ratty sofa.

“I want you to leave now. You can find that out on your own.”

His face shutters to blankness, and Shiro turns on his heels, exiting the building as if chased by his own forming suspicions.

*

The meeting with Victor is the last thing on Shiro’s mind as he makes his way back to his office. He jams his hands in his pockets and rounds his shoulders as he steps through newly iced sidewalks, heedless of the evening crowd rushing home, ruddy faces mostly obscured by thick scarves and coat lapels turned up against the cold.

His phone jitters in his pocket, an alert set to fifteen minutes before his appointment. He notices two missed calls - Keith - but brushes both quickly aside. Shiro curses the timing and turns, stepping out into the street to hail a cab.

“You know the arts college?” he asks the cabbie, as he slides onto creaky leather and shuts the door behind him. The cabbie nods once in the mirror.

Shiro stuffs his hand in his pocket and withdraws Lisa’s thrice folded schedule.

“Miller Hall” Shiro says, reading off of Jennifer’s neat handwriting. The cabbie nods once before setting the meter and turning into the flow of traffic.

Shiro’s head swoons a moment later as the cab makes a sharp left turn. He sets his head back on the headrest and closes his eyes, thinking back to the single energy bar he’d had for lunch and the cups of Americano at the cafe. Keith would kill him, or stuff him full first, then kill him with a lecture on eating right. He scoffs briefly to himself thinking about it, then his mind turns quickly back on the case, fitting in all the slots filled in by Jamie’s revelation.

The missed shifts and illness, the makeup and the new friend. He can sympathize with how terrifying it must have been, and so close to graduation, mixed with every other life stressor. If she’d had it similar to Jamie, it wouldn’t be that difficult to hide. Nothing like a fireball erupting from her fingertips. He thinks instantly of Cindy, squinting at him through the gap in the door, refusing to let him step inside.

He knocks his head back against the seat with a dull groan.

“Fucking idiot,” he spits out. The cabbie’s eyes flick his way in the rear view mirror. “Not. Uh. Not you.”

First he needed to get Lance and CORAN to do him a favor.

*

“LANCE Incorporated.”

“I thought you decided on Productions?” Shiro says. The cab stops at a red light.

“CORAN said it sounded too much like a film company. And that technically I don’t produce any goods which I know by agreeing means I become complicit in denying his creation - hoisted by my own petard and all - ”

“It’s hoist.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I need your help with something and it needs to be quick.”

“You got it. Detective stuff?” Lance asks, audibly perking up.

“Yes. Is CORAN listening?”

“I’d never disrespect your privacy like that, bro.”

“I am indeed, Mr. Shirogane,” CORAN’ sardonic tone cuts through the line.

“Good. CORAN, I need you in on this as well. I’m gonna text you an address, Lance. I need you both to look up open waterways, incinerators, dumps, anywhere within a five mile radius. It needs to be close and it needs to be capable of serving as a method of getting rid of a body. Imagine you’re not that strong and you don’t have a lot of time to do it.”

“Holy shit. No, no, this isn’t freaky as shit at all.”

“I promise I wouldn’t be calling if - I’m kind of in a tight spot,” Shiro says. The taxi takes another right and his stomach gives a nauseous twist.

“That better be a joke. I want to be your number one body disposing resource from now on,” Lance says. Shiro can hear the clatter of his fingers on his keyboard in the background. “So who did it? The roomate with the candlestick in the library?”

“That’s confidential,” Shiro says. “Call me as soon as you get the needed info.”

“Right away,” CORAN cuts in, and Shiro hangs up over Lance’s excited mile-a-minute chatter.

*

Shiro gets dropped off across the street from the law library and jogs most of the way across campus, nearly empty of foot traffic in the quickly darkening winter night. His phone rings as he crosses a broad, frosty expanse of grass. He’s breathing hard when he stops to check the caller ID. Keith again. Forcing down a flare of guilt, he rejects the call and continues on his way, pulse racing in his throat.

He feels sick; lightheaded and weak by the time he approaches the familiar thick columns of the art department. In the brief span it takes to arrive he runs the idea of bailing on the meeting more than once and taking the first taxi back to Lisa’s place.

He finds the studio from memory without trouble. The interior through the plated glass door is dark and empty, a single overhead light on near the supply closet. The door swings open silently. Shiro flicks the nearest light switch, sweeping his gaze around the hushed room briefly. Then he takes the nearest path to the back wall, eyes scanning the carefully pinned works from floor to ceiling, squinting for the telltale black scrawls.

_Bzzzt._

Lance. Shiro thumbs the accept button.

“Yeah?” he asks, in lieu of greeting.

“Nothing super convenient or super close. There’s a big mortuary that does cremations about seven miles out - ”

“Wouldn’t have access. Unless they broke in.” Shiro pauses to consider for a moment. “Not totally impossible, I guess.”

There’s a rustle of sound through the phone.

“Uh, well the nearest body of water is even further away. Plus the train only takes you halfway there, you’d either have to walk or cab the rest.”

They’re both half answers, not completely likely or unlikely. The prickle of doubt grows in his mind. He finds Lisa’s work, then as if compelled, checks the painted canvases surrounding it. There’s something here, something here, something -

“Shit,” he says into the phone.

“What?”

It’s Caroline’s name, clearly, almost daringly legible in bold, loopy script on the right corner of a landscape watercolor, the edges of the canvas coyly curling in with age.

“I’ll get back to you. Thanks. I just - shit - ” Shiro says, and barely notices as he hangs up. He rights himself swiftly, and the display takes the form of a trophy case, specimens preserved and mounted behind glass.

He turns away from the wall and takes a step back towards the door. Stops. There’s a moment where he feels like he can just go home, track whatever leads him in the roommates direction, find a way for that to work. There’s nothing behind him but his own delusions.

“Fucking hell,” Shiro mutters, and turns again on his heel.

In the adjoining room he opens one clay jar after another, nearly frantic in the push to prove himself wrong. They’re empty, every single one. A flood of relief as he opens the last one. He’s almost laughing. Then he glances down into its hollow belly and it’s as if time warps and crawls, molasses thick, as if he’s stuck in the center as it hardens and coalesces, an eternity between heartbeats.

Scorched white, human bones gather at the bottom of the gigantic urn, arranged in a delicate, perfect circle.

The door sighs open behind Shiro.

Shiro’s turning, reaching for his pocket as pain blooms bright at his temple, utterly and immediately incapacitating, ushering in the dark.

*

Shiro wakes to darkness.

There’s a pain in his neck, and his eyelids feel heavy as weights. He attempts to move only to find himself incapable. He opens his eyes slowly, his head is curled forward, and he’s slumped against a rough, unyielding wall. He sees his hands first, pressed together as if in prayer in his lap. They’re tied at the wrists. His legs stretch out before him like alien objects, and he sees his ankles are similarly trussed with a pair of zip ties.

He has a brief flare of hope, blinking down at his left arm with the knowledge he could easily use it to overturn a semi. But the most that he manages is a harsh, struggling breath.

“Welcome back.”

Victor’s deep voice resounds in the semi-dark. Now that his eyes have adjusted Shiro can see the room is lit by a dim, yellow bulb on the opposite wall. Pottery, broken and whole, sit as silent witnesses on simple shelves that line the room.

Footsteps approach and fingers tilt Shiro’s head back so it falls against the wall. Victor’s broad, handsome face smiles back at him in the dark. He steps back and perches against a workbench opposite Shiro, politely watching him blink away sweat and try to work through the sludge of his memory.

“Gonna stare me to death?” Shiro manages to say, the words slurring themselves through his teeth. His mouth feels like it did the day he’d gotten his wisdom teeth removed; swollen and unwieldy.

Victor barks out a sudden laugh.

“How long have you known?” he asks, cordial, as pleasant as an inquiry about the weather.

“Which part exactly? Cause there’s a lot going on here.” Shiro bites out.

Time unfolds agonizingly slow and incredibly precise. He can count the seconds between every harsh breath. The heavy, silent air presses in on them in the small tomb-like chamber. He’d been standing what felt like seconds before, ignorantly unearthing Victor’s secret.

Victor’s face splits in a grin, like a jack-o-lantern, gleefully menacing.

“Oh, you’re quite clueless aren’t you?”

He reaches behind him for something in his back pocket. Shiro’s breath hitches, his head gives an ever so slight jerk to the side. His heart renews its pounding at the movement, as miniscule as it may be. If he could just – stall – wait – _something_ –

“Allow me to shed some light on the issue,” Victor says pleasantly. He brings the object up in the palm of his hand and walks the few steps between them, crouching down to Shiro’s level. It’s a small hand mirror, dwarfed by the width of his broad palm. Shiro waits for the joke. Then Victor tilts his hand up, eyes rapt on Shiro’s face, and Shiro gets his first good look at his reflection. Victor’s previous words swirl in the air, dropping like anvils in Shiro’s conscious mind.

“Holy shit,” he slurs out.

The entire left side of his face, down his neck, to his shoulder, is gone. He can see the gray concrete where his jaw should be. The effect is incomplete, malfunctioning in its newness, sickening where his face splits as if spliced in two.

Utterly and completely invisible. Like his fucking hand in that club. The prickling, numb feeling he had all day. He was - 

“What a fascinating gift gone to waste,” Victor says quietly.

“Well if you let me go I promise I’ll put it to good use.”

Victor simply stares at Shiro, eyes unblinking, his great form hulking over Shiro in the dark.

“I guess I can admit that would defeat the purpose,” Victor replies, amused. “I find your kind most fascinating _in flore_.”

“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” Shiro says. He strains to make the tiniest movement, test the bond in his hands, wiggle a goddamn pinky toe. All that escapes is a soft, grunt of frustration.

“I released them. As I’m about to release you. The process could do with some refinement.”

“That’s fucking sick, you know that?”

Victor only smiles.

“You may appreciate it more after a practical demonstration,” Victor says smoothly. He takes the flashlight with him as he leaves, the heavy door shutting behind him, a series of clicks reverberating with finality in the small room.

*

Shiro yells until his voice dies in his throat and the walls seem to close in on him in the dark. Time slows and passes in fits and starts. He replays the last few days, those last few minutes before. Lance. Lance and CORAN knew. Keith Shiro had ignored. Shut off, the only untarnished spot in his shitstain life.

He’s almost thankful when the darkness overtakes the slowing, sluggish crawl of his thoughts. He’s thinking he feels his toes –

*

In his dreams Shiro’s seated in that train again, scenery passing by in a blur. A well thumbed newspaper is in his lap and his fingers are dusted black with its ink.

In real life his last memory was flipping through its pages. In this dream he is frozen.

In this dream Keith crouches before him, eyebrows drawn in worry and he’s saying Shiro’s name he’s saying _Shiro_ , _Shiro_ , _Shiro_ -

Shiro wakes.

He’s in a hospital bed and Keith’s beside him, curled over the side with his head resting against Shiro’s blanket covered thigh. Machines beep softly in the background. His first attempt at speaking comes out as a dry cough. Keith stirs.

“Hey, handsome,” Shiro rasps out, voice whisper soft.

“Shiro,” Keith says, instantly awake, then his somnolent face does a funny thing, crumbling. He starts to speak then stops himself, like he doesn’t trust his voice.

Shiro licks his dry lips to speak and a moment later Keith is at his side, bringing a cup of water with a straw from a nearby table to Shiro’s lips.

A nurse steps into the room on a soft swell of voices and the sound of varied activity. She checks Shiro’s vitals. He waves away an offer of food. Out of the corner of his eye Keith stands up from his chair, the sound of it scraping across the floor overlaying their conversation. He stands at the window until the nurse leaves, hands deep in his pockets.

“You need your strength,” Keith says.

“Not hungry,” Shiro replies. He reaches for the cup of water and takes a slow slip. His dream slips back like smoke.

“You get me out?”

Keith’s shoulders stiffen.

“How?” Shiro asks. He snorts when Keith still doesn’t respond. “Hey, the vigil’s over here, buddy.”

“That’s not funny.” Keith turns, back ramrod straight, jaw stiff in that that telltale stubborn jut that Shiro desperately wants to kiss away.

“Get over here.”

Shiro lets his hoarse throat do most of the sympathy work. He sticks out a pleading hand, and Keith softens like butter.

When he’s back at Shiro’s bedside he stands blinking down at Shiro’s hand like it’s a foreign object, clearly torn between his own misery and stubbornness.

The hand mirror’s reflection wells up in Shiro’s memory.

“How was I when you - were you the only one?”

“Yeah,” Keith says. Shiro tugs him down until he’s seated on his chair again.

“How long have you known?” is Keith’s next question, and the burgeoning anxiety in Shiro pops like a balloon.

“Not until that day, or, you know, whenever I’d gotten there,” Shiro says. So Keith had seen his disappearing act. The fact that he was still here, sleeping at Shiro’s side, more angry at the lie than the - then how Shiro was now -

Shiro takes a shuddering breath.

“I was an ass not returning your calls,” he says finally.

Keith’s head snaps up.

“I think my hearing’s going.”

“Yeah, yeah. Get closer my arm’s getting tired,” Shiro says, tugging Keith over the small space left between them.

Keith grabs his chair and drags it forward so he’s as close as he was when Shiro woke up and Shiro can hold Keith’s hand to his chest, thumb rubbing at the soft skin of Keith’s inner wrist.

“I called Lance when you wouldn’t answer,” Keith says, finally.

“And then?”

“Then I called Hunk and got down there myself,” Keith’s voice gives slightly and he pauses to clear his throat. “Took us a while but we found you.”

“Victor?” Shiro asks.

Keith’s face darkens.

“Hunk got him. He’s in custody.”

There’s a long silence while Shiro fights back a surge of renewed disgust and helpless anger. He looks away from Keith and blinks up at the ceiling until he feels like he can speak again.

“I won’t ever do that again to you,” Shiro says. He hears Keith’s breath rush out, and he pulls at Keith’s hand and keeps pulling until Keith’s half in the bed with him, and at that Keith buries his face in Shiro’s neck, a shudder running through him.

S _orry_. _Say it, say the fucking word_.

“You can put a tracker on me if you want,” Shiro says.

Keith lets out a muffled sound, somewhere between a sob and a laugh.

“Or a leash. You like leashes?”

“Don’t.” Keith wriggles in Shiro’s hold, pulling back to make eye contact so Shiro can know he’s really serious, even if his face has gone a telltale pink. “This is serious, Shiro.”

“I am being serious,” Shiro answers. He widens his eyes in mock gravity, then interrupts as Keith’s opening his mouth for a rebuttal, deciding to forgo opening this particular can of worms for now.

“How’s the kid, anyways?” Shiro asks, changing the subject.

Keith blinks.

“Um. Yeah. He’s fine. I went over after.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, he’s...a good kid.”

“He hit on you?” Shiro asks, and Keith flushes then laughs. That would be a _yes_.

“Kinda,” Keith says. The tops his ears go pink. “It was cute.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s a defense mechanism. I don’t think he’s seen another living creature in that house other than me and his pops for half a year.”

“Well gee, you know how to make a boy feel special.”

Shiro laughs.

“You know what I mean.”

“But I’m not worried,” Keith says, cocking an eyebrow, “are you?”

He’s going for brash but falling just short, something slightly shaky in his expression stopping Shiro’s immediate answer. There’s a brief moment where they simply stare at each other.

“I need to get out of this bed,” Shiro says. He pushes up to a full sitting position.

“Hunk’s on his way to question you.”

“That can wait. He knows where I live,” Shiro says stubbornly. He flips the covers over and swings his legs over the side of the bed, careful to get off on the side of his IV. He presses the button to call the nurse over, wary of the last time he’d tried to yank his drip out and ended up with a spectacular, mind numbingly painful bruise.

“Shiro, you just woke up. You need to rest.”

“I can rest at home,” Shiro replies, pushing to his feet. He feels light-headed for all of a second, but even with that and the slight weakness to his legs he feels better than he has in days. He makes his way over to the dresser across the room, where a change of clothes is folded and waiting for him, then pauses in front of the thin strip of mirror on the wall.

His reflection frowns back at him, a giant white bandage like a headband around the top of his head, his stubble growing in. He closes his eyes and breathes deep, pictures a banked bed of burning coals. This time he feels it like a blanket thrown overhead, sweeping his entire body. He opens his eyes quick enough to see his reflection blank out for all of a second, like the brief wall of static between changing channels on his Aunt’s old Sony model TV.

Keith makes a soft sound of surprise behind him.

Shiro smiles wickedly at Keith through the mirror.

“Absolutely not,” Keith says.

“I could just walk out of here naked if I wanted.”

Shiro waggles his eyebrows at Keith.

“Oh, it’s funny now?”

“Department stores, the movies. Scaring the shit outta you in the shower.”

“You scare me every day of my life.”

“I’ve changed my mind about being a PI. A career in petty crime sounds like way more fun.”

“Takashi Shirogane, if you don’t - ” Keith’s voice says, rising in the background.

“Alright, alright,” Shiro replies, and if he still feels a prickle of doubt and fear for the future its wholly and completely washed out by the happiness of the moment, getting Keith riled up enough for a second to stop treating him like he was made of glass.

Shiro’s still smiling as he steps away from the mirror and begins reaching for his clothes.

*

Out under a cloudless sky Shiro feels like he’ll never take the sun’s touch for granted again. It slants rich and golden over the varying heights of the jampacked cityscape and over the bustling traffic that pays it no mind, crawling in endless lines of stop-and-go motion.

“Say you’ll tell me next time,” Keith says, eyes wide in solemnity.

Shiro opens his mouth but for once he can’t find a handy wisecrack to break the moment. He settles for the simple truth.

“I’ll tell you next time.”

*

The rest of the story unravels over the next couple of days. Hunk comes over the following afternoon to drop off Shiro’s phone and notes, the rest of his clothing still being processed as evidence. They put Lance on speakerphone and Hunk fills in the rest of what little details he can tell with the case still open, but as much as he can to the people that helped solve it. There were eight other ceramic pots similar to the one Shiro had found in Victor’s home, each with a set of carefully arranged bones. They’d already identified three of them to missing persons cases with registered mutations.

“Sick,” Lance says over the phone.

And Shiro does feel literally sick for a moment. Keith’s arm settles on his thigh where they’re seated together on the sofa, and Shiro takes his hand in his own, gripping it tight.

“You were more of an aberration, Shiro,” Hunk says, “his usual MO was a whole lot quicker, something that didn’t leave a mark on any of the bones, no bullet heads or bashed in skulls.”

“Well I feel special,” Shiro says.

“You are,” Hunk replies, “here I was telling you off the case.”

Shiro snorts.

“I got myself a blow to the head and a hospital stay. Nancy Drew could’ve done better.”

“I might start looking into that process,” Hunk says, tongue between his teeth, “In the meantime I owe you one.”

Shiro snorts in answer, then gives Hunk a sly girn.

“How many referrals worth is that favor?”

“I want in on this!” Lance pipes up.

“I as well, Officer,” CORAN intones, “I do believe we’ve proven our use.”

“The details aren’t up to me,” Hunk says, giving Shiro and Keith a meaningful look.

“Hunk. No,” Keith says almost immediately.

Lance and CORAN speak up at the same time as Hunk laughs, reaching for his keys.

“We’ll figure something out,” Shiro says loudly, to settle everyone down for now.

*

Later that night Shiro puts everything from the last few weeks far from mind, as he stretches out in their bed and lets Keith sink down on top of him. The space heater hums quietly to itself in the corner, providing a slightly unnecessary addition to the warmth ratcheting up between their moving bodies. In the dark and warmth of their bed, with Keith’s hands on him, Shiro wants to believe the outside world can stop existing. He’s wholly visible, for now. He’d tossed the bag of suppressants from the hospital as soon as they’d stepped outside of its thick, concrete walls. He could figure out the rest later.

Keith’s riding him slow and deep, sinking down and swiveling his hips in the most excruciating, tiny circles once Shiro’s bottomed out. With barely any movement they’re both breathing hard and starting to sweat. Shiro slides his hands up the flat expanse of Keith’s stomach to his chest. He traces the delicate arch of Keith’s collarbone with his fingers while his other hand grips at Keith’s trim waist. Keith’s mouth falls open as he rocks down, head tilted down, gaze riveted to where their bodies join, and Shiro drinks the sight of him ravenously in the darkened room.

“You’re gorgeous,” Shiro says softly. He tilts his hips up as Keith sinks down so he lodges in an extra inch deep. Keith lets out a soft moan. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

“You don’t have a choice in that,” Keith gasps out. He steadies his hands palms down on Shiro’s chest, and just does the same movement that’s been driving Shiro crazy for the past ten minutes, circling his hips and squeezing down on Shiro’s hard, aching dick, deep in the soft, wet heat of him.

“Fu-uck,” Shiro says on a drawn out exhale.

“Yeah?”

“Just keep me in there,” Shiro says. Keith laughs breathily.

He gets moving again, fucking himself down in fast, sharp thrusts that tighten the heat coiling low in Shiro’s gut so he feels the slow crawl of his orgasm rushing towards him and he’s letting soft sounds escape his throat with every thrust.

Then Keith slows down again so the incoming rush slowly abates.

“Tease,” Shiro says lightly.

He reaches for Keith’s flushed, hard cock, curved up against his flat stomach, and gives it a nice, slow stroke.

“Mm,” Keith says in response. He grinds down on Shiro’s cock, lips parting as Shiro rubs the leaking tip. Then he strokes the length of Keith’s flushed cock gently in the loose circle of his fingers. He watches Keith fight the involuntary jerk of his hips, mouth falling open, as Shiro continues playing with him until -  “Ah - ah - ” Then Keith’s curling forward, balls drawing up tight, ass clutching down on Shiro’s cock as he comes. Shiro jerks him through it, come streaking his fist and dribbling between his fingers to further wet Keith’s length as he squeezes and strokes the swollen flesh.

“Oh - don’t - don’t,” Keith gasps weakly as his dick grows too sensitive. Shiro gives it a last, delicate stroke and leaves it be. Then he grabs Keith’s lax form, chest heaving as he comes down, and surges forward, turning them both in bed so Keith’s on his back and Shiro’s curling over him. Keith immediately grabs onto Shiro’s shoulders, gasping as Shiro thrusts back in. He’s wet and open enough that Shiro sinks in easily. He groans as he bottoms out, and Keith gasps so sweetly that Shiro barely staves the urge to rut into him like an animal. He leans down to kiss at Keith’s open mouth, Keith humming happily against Shiro’s lips, then opening up easily for Shiro’s tongue.

“Don’t let me go,” Shiro says, nonsensically. Now. Ever. He can see himself slipping away like a kite on a string, the inevitability of it rushing towards him.

“Idiot,” Keith says, “who’s gonna bail you out of your budding criminal career?”

Shiro laughs then nudges at Keith, licking into his open mouth. He pulls away and begins to move his hips again, driving into Keith just to hear him sigh, moaning out and wrapping his arms around Shiro tight.

A weak laugh escapes Shiro. Then he groans and rocks into Keith again and Keith kisses him languid and slow, drawing him back every time he pulls away.

*

 


End file.
